Visco‐plasticity—plasticity and creep in elastic solids—a unified numerical solution approach

Abstract The visco‐plastic model of material behaviour is of much practical interest in its own right and initial strain techniques for its solution have been developed and proved efficient. More important however is the fact that the visco‐plastic model can be used to generate plasticity solutions in a simple manner when stationary conditions are reached and, at the other extreme, can reproduce standard creep phenomena. Used in this sense it allows the treatment of non‐associated plasticity and strain softening situations which present difficulties in conventional plasticity approaches. A standard programme thus allows the treatment of a wide range of materially non‐linear problems. The paper discusses various applications of the new general formulation and introduces certain numerical information on solution stability.