Stress field

About: Stress field is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11926 publications have been published within this topic receiving 226417 citations.

A numerical study of the effects of wall deformation on earth pressures

Abstract: When designing any earth retaining structure it is necessary to estimate the limiting earth pressures. This is usually achieved by assuming a linear pressure distrigution and by using active and passive pressure coefficients obtained by either limit equilibrium, stress field solutions of limit analysis. These coefficients are approximate in a theoretical sense, do not distinguish between modes of wall movement, and provide no pre-failure information. In practice, wall movements are dependent on the construction method and support conditions provided. Any effect of such movements on earth pressures is therefore of practical interest. In this paper the finite element method is used to investigate the effect of the mode of wall movement on the generation of earth pressure. Both smooth and rough walls are considered. It is shown that the distribution of earth pressure is highly dependent on the assumed mode of deformation. The resultant forces on the wall are also affected, but to a lesser degree. The, effect of soil dilatation, the initial horizontal stress and the distribution of soil stiffness with depth are also examined.

Three-dimensional linear elastic distributions of stress and strain energy density ahead of V-shaped notches in plates of arbitrary thickness

Abstract: This paper presents an analytical solution, substantiated by extensive finite element calculations, for the stress field at a notch root in a plate of arbitrary thickness. The present approach builds on two recently developed analysis methods for the in-plane stresses at notch root under plane-stress or plane strain conditions, and the out-of-plane stresses at a three-dimensional notch root. The former solution (Filippi et al., 2002) considered the plane problem and gave the in-plane stress distributions in the vicinity of a V-shaped notch with a circular tip. The latter solution by Kotousov and Wang (2002a), which extended the generalized plane-strain theory by Kane and Mindlin to notches, provided an expression for the out-of-plane constraint factor based on some modified Bessel functions. By combining these two solutions, both valid under linear elastic conditions, closed form expressions are obtained for stresses and strain energy density in the neighborhood of the V-notch tip. To demonstrate the accuracy of the newly developed solutions, a significant number of fully three-dimensional finite element analyses have been performed to determine the influences of plate thickness, notch tip radius, and opening angle on the variability of stress distributions, out-of-plane stress constraint factor and strain energy density. The results of the comprehensive finite element calculations confirmed that the in-plane stress concentration factor has only a very weak variability with plate thickness, and that the present analytical solutions provide very satisfactory correlation for the out-of-plane stress concentration factor and the strain constraint factor.