1.2.

Historleal Remarks 5

This book attempts to give a concise description of the basic concepts of

the theory and its modem developments, as weIl as its computer implementa-
tions.

1.2. Historieal Remarks

1.2.1. Pioneering Work
It is generaIly regarded that the origin ofplasticity, as a branch ofmechanies
of continua, dates back to a series of papers from 1864 to 1872 by Tresca
on the extrusion of metaIs, in which he proposed the first yield condition,
which states that ametal yields plastically when the maximum shear stress
attains a critical value. The actual formulation of the theory was don e in
1870 by St. Venant, who introduced the basic constitutive relations for what
today we would call rigid, perfectly plastic materials in plane stress. The
salient feature of this formulation was the suggestion of a jlow rule stating
that the principal axes of the strain increment (or strain rate) coincide with
the principal axes of stress. It remained for Levy later in 1870 to obtain the
general equations in three dimensions. A generalization similar to the results
of Levy was arrived at independently by von Mises in alandmark paper
in 1913, accompanied by his well-known, pressure-insensitive yield criterion
(J2-theory, or octahedral shear stress yield condition).
In 1924, Prandtl extended the St. Venant-Levy-von Mises equations for
the plane continuum problem to include the elastic component of strain,
and Reuss in 1930 carried out their extension to three dimensions. In 1928,
von Mises generalized his previous work for a rigid, perfectly plastie solid
to include a general yield function and discussed the relation between the
direction of plastic strain rate (increment) and the regular or smooth yield
surface, thus introducing formally the concept of using the yield function
as a plastic potential in the incremental stress-strain relations of flow theory.
As is weIl known now, the von Mises yield function may be regarded as a
plastic potential for the St. Venant-Levy-von Mises-Prandtl-Reuss stress-
strain relations. The appropriate flow role associated with the Tresca yield
condition, which contains singular regimes (i.e., comers or discontinuities
in derivatives with respect to stress), was discussed by Reuss in 1932 and
1933.
Since greater emphasis was placed on problems involving flow or perfect
plasticity in the years before 1940, the development ofincremental constitu-
tive relationships for hardening materials proceeded more slowly. For
example, in 1928, Prandtl attempted to formulate general relations for
hardening behavior, and Melan, in 1938, generalized the foregoing concepts
of perfect plasticity and gave incremental relations for hardening solids
with smooth (regular) yield surface. AIso, uniqueness theorems for elastic-