Plastic shear deformation of a thin strain-hardening disc: variational principles

An analytical solution is derived for the problem of shearing of a thin disc of incompressible rigid, plastic strain-hardening material. The solution is obtained by a methodology introduced by the author in previous publications, relying fundamentally on continuity of the rotation-rate vector field. A variational theorem is derived which shows that the velocity vector field is unique if the boundary values are properly prescribed. The derived solution is compared to experiments, with which it shows good agreement.