Plastic Collapse Modes of Truss Structures under Complex Loading Cycles

The kinematic plastic limit, unified shakedown criteria, and reduced kinematic formulation have been utilized to study the plastic collapse modes of truss structures subjected to complex loading cycles. The development from a series of local alternating plastic failures toward the global instantaneous or incremental collapse of the structures with increasing load ranges has been identified. The finite element method and optimization techniques are implemented to effectively solve the resulting mathematical programming problems, with illustrative examples and explanations.