ABSTRACT

The shakedown occurrence of structures subjected to variable repeated or cyclic loads represents a safe behaviuor, for the structure is made able to adapt to such cyclic loading sequences in a purely elastic manner, although some plastic deformation of finite limited amount may have developed at initial loading phases and then stop. The paper approaches a first state-of-art on experimental reseaches on shakedown behaviour: the results obtained from various structural typologies are closely discussed and compared with the phenomenology of adaptation and the theoretical expected responses. While the importance of such a peculiar elasto-plasto-elastic behaviour is stressed by the results, the issues of further experimental research is this domain are oudined.