ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a method to carry out the combined limit and deformation analysis of elastoplastic structures. The effects of combined bending and axial force are included through a (hexagonal) piecewise linear yield locus that can accommodate either perfect plasticity or isotropic softening. The formulation is an instance of a class of notoriously difficulty to solve optimization problems known as amathematical program with equilibrium constraints (MPEC). A relaxation algorithm is proposed to solve the MPEC. Two examples are given for illustrative proposes.
