Elastic plastic analysis by the asymptotic pivoting method

A method to solve linear complementarity problems in the framework of the step-by-step static or dynamic elastic plastic analysis of discrete structures is here presented. It is based on the recursive solution of a sequence of linear complementarity problems in which the constraint matrix is diagonal and deduced from the matrix of the original linear complementarity problem. A convergence theorem is proved. The physical meaning of the procedure is studied and it is shown to be a plastic relaxation. A Fortran routine based on the proposed method is provided. Several numerical applications are presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.