Material Forces in elasto-plastic Materials

In this contribution the concept of configurational forces, also called material forces, is applied to rate–independent, elasto–plastic materials. The theory of configurational forces is briefly recast. Zones of plastic deformation can be interpreted as distributed inhomogeneities. With this background the theory of configurational forces can be applied in many situations, including plastic zones at crack tips, elastic inclusions in elasto–plastic materials and localized deformation. The numerical evaluation is done with the Finite Element Method. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)