Non-cyclic shakedown/ratcheting boundary determination - Part 2: Numerical implementation

Determining the boundary between the shakedown and ratcheting domains (ratchet boundary) for a component using cyclic elastic-plastic analysis is computationally very expensive since it requires a solution over several loading cycles to be repeated several times. A non-cyclic method to identify the ratchet boundary directly without the need for cyclic analysis was recently proposed. The numerical implementation of the non-cyclic method offers the promise to be an attractive alternative to cyclic elastic-plastic analysis since it is simple, and requires considerably less computational effort and computer storage space. Another attractive feature is that the method provides a go/no go criterion for the ratchet boundary, whereas the results of a cyclic elastic-plastic analysis are often difficult to interpret near the ratchet boundary. To explore the performance of the method further, it is applied to a number of configurations that include two-dimensional and three-dimensional effects.