Limit-analysis of a circular cylinder obeying the Green plasticity criterion and loaded in combined tension and torsion

This short paper presents the limit-analysis of a cylinder with circular basis, made of an ideal-plastic material obeying Green’s yield criterion and subjected to combined tension and torsion. The exact solution of the problem is provided in the form of a statically and plastically admissible stress field and a kinematically admissible velocity field, associated via the normality rule. The overall yield locus, that is the set of pairs [tension force, torsion torque] for which unrestrained plastic flow occurs, is expressed first in parametric form, then explicitly upon elimination of the parameter involved. The explicit expression of this yield locus also entails that of the overall flow rule via the overall normality property. The impact of these results is two-fold. First, they provide a fresh example of a solution to a limit-analysis problem exceptionally combining three generally mutually exclusive features: be non-trivial, exact and explicit. Second, they provide a way of using simple experiments of combined tension and torsion of cylinders to determine the parameter characterizing the influence of the mean stress in Green’s criterion.