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Microstructure-sensitive design (MSD), for optimal performance of engineering components that are sensitive to material anisotropy, has largely been confined to the realm of theory. The purpose of this paper is to insert the MSD framework into a finite element environment in order to arrive at a practical tool for improved selection and design of materials for critical engineering situations.

This study applies the recently developed Hybrid Bishop-Hill (HBH) model to map the yield surface of anisotropic oxygen free electronic copper. Combining this information with the detailed local stresses determined via finite element analysis (FEA), a “configurational yield stress” is determined for the entire component. By varying the material choice/processing conditions and selecting the directionality of anisotropy, an optimal configuration is found.

The paper provides a new FEA-based framework for MSD for yield-limited situations. The approach identified optimal directionality and processing configurations for three engineering situations that are particularly sensitive to material anisotropy.

The microstructure design space for this study is limited to a selection of eight copper materials produced by a range of processing methods, but is generalizable to many materials that exhibit anisotropic behavior.

The introduction of MSD methodology into a finite element environment is a first step toward a comprehensive designer toolkit for exploiting the anisotropy of general materials (such as metals) in a way that is routinely undertaken in the world of fiber-based composite materials. While the gains are not as sizeable (due to the less-extreme anisotropy), in many applications they may be extremely important.

Recent publications have highlighted the effectiveness of using a consistent tangent modulus when solving elastic‐plastic problems. The formulation of a consistent tangent modulus is closely related to the scheme used to integrate the constitutive equations. Recent work has shown how many of these schemes currently in use can be derived from certain broad classes of algorithms. In this paper these procedures are examined for a number of commonly used yield/failure criteria. For certain cases a remarkably simple formulation results which can lead to considerable savings in computational time.

An algorithm is described for the incremental solution of elastic—plastic finite element analysis using a piecewise holonomic constitutive law based on a von Mises yield condition. The holonomic assumption effectively converts each incremental problem into a non‐linear elastic—plastic problem. The algorithm is iterative, substituting the non‐linear strain potential by a quadratic potential at each iteration, and convergence is proved. The algorithm has been implemented into a finite element program as a series of secant modulus approximations, and results for a variety of problems are given. The rate of convergence is fairly slow, but the algorithm can be very easily programmed as an extension of an elastic program, and may have value as an independent method of determining incremental elastic—plastic solutions.

This paper aims to study the contact between rough cylindrical surfaces considering the elastic-plastic deformation of asperities.

The elastic deformation of the nominal surface of the curved surface is considered, the contact area is discretized by the calculus thought and then the nominal distance between two surfaces is obtained by iteration after the pressure distribution is assumed. On the basis of the Zhao, Maietta and Chang elastic-plastic model, the contact area and the contact pressure of the rough cylindrical surfaces are calculated by the integral method, and then the solution for the contact between rough cylindrical surfaces is obtained.

The contact characteristic parameters of smooth surface Hertz contact, elastic contact and elastic-plastic contact between rough cylindrical surfaces are calculated under different plastic indexes and loads, and the calculation results are compared and analyzed. The analysis shows that the solution considering the elastic-plastic deformation of asperities for the contact between rough cylindrical surfaces is scientific and rational.

This paper provides a new effective method for the calculation of the contact between rough cylindrical surfaces.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a static friction coefficient prediction model of rough contact surfaces based on the contact mechanics analysis of elastic-plastic fractal surfaces.

In this paper, the continuous deformation stage of the multi-scale asperity is considered, i.e. asperities on joint surfaces go through three deformation stages in succession, the elastic deformation, the elastic-plastic deformation (the first elastic-plastic region and the second elastic-plastic region) and the plastic deformation, rather than the direct transition from the elastic deformation to the plastic deformation. In addition, the contact between rough metal surfaces should be the contact of three-dimensional topography, which corresponds to the fractal dimension D (2 < D < 3), not two-dimensional curves. So, in consideration of the elastic-plastic deformation mechanism of asperities and the three-dimensional topography, the contact mechanics of the elastic-plastic fractal surface is analyzed, and the static friction coefficient nonlinear prediction model of the surface is further established.

There is a boundary value between the normal load and the fractal dimension. In the range smaller than the boundary value, the normal load decreases with fractal dimension; in the range larger than the boundary value, the normal load increases with fractal dimension. Considering the elastic-plastic deformation of the asperity on the contact surface, the total normal contact load is larger than that of ignoring the elastic-plastic deformation of the asperity. There is a proper fractal dimension, which can make the static friction of the contact surface maximum; there is a negative correlation between the static friction coefficient and the fractal scale coefficient.

In the mechanical structure, the research and prediction of the static friction coefficient characteristics of the interface will lay a foundation for the understanding of the mechanism of friction and wear and the interaction relationship between contact surfaces from the micro asperity-scale level, which has an important engineering application value.

A review is made of methods for calculating parameters characterizing crack tip behaviour in non‐linear materials. Convenient methods of calculating J‐integral type quantities are reviewed, classified broadly into two groups, as domain integrals and virtual crack extension techniques. In addition to considerations of how such quantities may be calculated by finite elements, assessment methods of conducting the actual incremental analyses are described.

This paper gives a review of the finite element techniques (FE) applied in the area of material processing. The latest trends in metal forming, non‐metal forming, powder metallurgy and composite material processing are briefly discussed. The range of applications of finite elements on these subjects is extremely wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore the aim of the paper is to give FE researchers/users only an encyclopaedic view of the different possibilities that exist today in the various fields mentioned above. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on finite element applications in material processing for 1994‐1996, where 1,370 references are listed. This bibliography is an updating of the paper written by Brannberg and Mackerle which has been published in Engineering Computations, Vol. 11 No. 5, 1994, pp. 413‐55.

Crack tip stresses are used to relate the ability of structures to perform under the influence of cracks and defects. One of the methods to determine three-dimensional crack tip stresses is through the J-T_z method. The J-T_z method has been used extensively to characterize the stresses of cracked geometries that demonstrate positive T-stress but limited in characterizing negative T-stresses. The purpose of this paper is to apply the J-T_z method to characterize a three-dimensional crack tip stress field in a changing crack length from positive to negative T-stress geometries.

Elastic-plastic crack border fields of deep and shallow cracks in tension and bending loads were investigated through a series of three-dimensional finite element (FE) and analytical J-T_z solutions for a range of crack lengths ranging from 0.1⩽a/W⩽0.5 for two thickness extremes of B/(W − a)=1 and 0.05.

Both the FE and the J-T_z approaches showed that the combined in-plane and the out-of-plane constraint loss were differently affected by the T-stress and the out-of-plane size effects when the crack length changed from deep to shallow cracks. The conditions of the J-T_z dominance on the three-dimensional crack front tip were shown to be limited to positive T-stress geometries, and the J-T_z-Q^2D approach can extend the crack border dominance of the three-dimensional deep and shallow bend models along the crack front tip until perturbed by an elastic-plastic corner field.

The paper reports the limitation of the J-T_z approach, which is used to calculate the state of three-dimensional crack tip stresses in power law hardening materials. The results from this paper suggest that the characterization of the three-dimensional crack tip stress in power law hardening materials is still an open issue and requires other suitable solutions to solve the problem.

This paper demonstrates a thorough analysis of a three-dimensional elastic-plastic crack tip fields for geometries that are initially either fully constrained (positive T-stress) or unconstrained (negative T-stress) crack tip fields but, subsequently, the T-stress sign changes due to crack length reduction and specimen thickness increase. The J-T_z stress-based method has been tested and its dominance over the crack tip field is shown to be affected by the combined in-plane and the out-of-plane constraints and the corner field effects.

Numerical solutions in computational plasticity are severely challenged when concrete and geomaterials are considered with non‐regular yield surfaces, strain‐softening and non‐associated flow. There are two aspects that are of immediate concern within load steps which are truly finite: first, the iterative corrector must assure that the equilibrium stress state and the plastic process variables do satisfy multiple yield conditions with corners, Fi(σ, q) = 0, at discrete stages of the solution process. To this end, a reliable return mapping algorithm is required which minimizes the error of the plastic return step. Second, the solution of non‐linear equations of motion on the global structural level must account for limit points and premature bifurcation of the equilibrium path. The current paper is mainly concerned with the implicit integration of elasto‐plastic hardening/softening relations considering non‐associated flow and the presence of composite yield conditions with corners.

The applicability of a non‐linear finite element method for the determination of the static strength of tubular joints is examined. In order to establish static strength, non‐linear elasto‐plastic models are implemented. Techniques for automatically generating finite element meshes in stress analysis of tubular intersections are used. The analysis is carried out on a typical X‐joint under axial brace loads and the model represents only one‐eighth of the joint. The results are obtained by two different element procedures: three node flat shell element (Ilyushin yield criterion); eight node isoparametric shell element (von Mises yield criterion). The objective of this work is to discuss the modelling and computational aspects which are required for dealing with this elasto‐plastic analysis and to determine the necessary degree of refinement in order to obtain reliably the loads at which ultimate failure occurs.