Inelastic analysis of piping systems

Following the conventional elastic approach, the pipe element is characterized by variables associated with the center line in the following way: generalized stresses are obtained by integration of local stresses giving way to hoop and tension stresses and to bending and torsional moments; the conjugated strains are identified with uniform hoop and longitudinal strains and variations in neutral axis curvatuves. For plasticity problems, the yield surface is defined by a diagonal quadratic function in terms of the generalized stresses and work hardening parameters. By addition of the Hill's principle and a hardening rule, the formulation is similar to the one commonly used in finite element method. (orig.)