vi Preface

materials and their constitutive modeling in the pre- and postfracture ranges.
Computer implementation of these models together with model subroutines
are included in a companion book entitled Theory, Probiems, and CAE
Softwares of Stmctural Plasticity by Chen and Zhang (1988).
Part V on limit analysis is devoted to the generallimit theorems and their
application to metal and concrete structures and the interaction of these
structures with ice and soil media. It covers various aspects of modem
techniques of limit analysis, and the discussion is illustrated by many
examples dealing with practical problems in structural engineering.
The book can be used for courses ofvarious lengths. The first six chapters
can be reasonably covered in a three-hour one-semester course for the
first-year graduate student who is learning about inelastic behavior of
materials for the first time. In a course for graduate students who have
already completed a course on plastic analysis of steel structures, the last
two chapters on limit analysis can also be covered. The chapter on concrete
plasticity may be skipped on a first readingo This part of the material is
necessarily written at a slightly more advanced level, because it is directed
toward the practicing engineer who is working on concrete structures in
the general area of nonlinear analysis. The mathematics used here does not
extend beyond the usual calculus so that the reader who has thoroughly
studied the first six chapters has given himself most of the needed prepar-
ation. We have endeavored to give reasonably complete literature references
to the topics covered in Part IV on concrete plasticity. The inclusion of a
computer subroutine for a concrete model in the companion book cited
previously is intended to encourage the reader to try out the proposed
models.
Over the past years, Professor Chen has taught courses in plasticityand
limit analysis at Lehigh University and Purdue University and has also
given a series of lectures at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
National Taiwan University, and University of Kassel. Early drafts of this
book have been tested as classroom notes in these courses. The material
on concrete plasticity was prepared more recently and was presented as
guest lectures at the 1985 Workshop on Recent Developments in Solid
Mechanics at Peking University, Beijing, China.
Professor Ch en wishes to thank Mr. Zhang Hung for preparing the
Answers to Selected Problems as well as the Solution Manual during his
course work on Structural Plasticity and later as a teaching and research
assistant on this subject area in the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue
University.

W.F. CHEN
November, 1987 D.J. HAN