Plastic limit analysis and optimum design of structures for uncertain conditions.

At the application of the plastic analysis and design methods the control of the plastic behaviour of the structures is an important requirement. Since the plastic limit analysis provides no information about the magnitude of the plastic deformations and residual displacements accumulated before the adaptation of the structure, therefore complementary strain energy of the residual forces could be considered an overall measure of the plastic performance of structures and the plastic deformations should be controlled by introducing a bound for magnitude of this energy. If the design uncertainties (manufacturing, strength, geometrical) are expressed by the calculation of the complementary strain energy of the residual forces a reliability based extended plastic limit design problem is formed. In this research, due to the uncertainties the bound for the complementary strain energy of the residual forces is given randomly and a general approach to evaluate the limit load capacity of structures for uncertain conditions is presented. The aim of this study is to evaluate limit load capacity of structures with limited residual strain energy on the probabilistically given conditions. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)