Extremum principles for the energy change due to defect growth in a plate under bending (Q1117739)

Two extremum principles for the energy release problem of an elastic- perfectly plastic body were derived by the second author [(*) Int. J. Solids Struct. 19, 767-771 (1983; Zbl 0516.73020)], who emphasized that the key feature of the method consisted on bounding the energy increment (in contrast to existing methods bounding the energy) due to, for example, a crack propagation. The applications were also shown by the second author and \textit{A. Golebiewska-Herrmann} [(**) ibid. 19, 1019-1023 (1983; Zbl 0549.73091)] by means of a very simple crack problem. The present paper is devoted to the derivation of equivalent principles within the framework of classical plate theory. Unlike in (*) and (**), where the effect of body forces was neglected, the present formulation takes into account the presence of distributed pressure on the faces of the plate. The aim of the paper is to provide an approximate method to compute the bounds for the change of the total energy of the plate due to the growth of a defect. As a consequence, the method also provides means of determining approximate solutions for the elastic fields governing the problem. To illustrate how the method is applied, a simple inclusion- problem is considered. Bounds for the energy increment due to the growth of the inclusion, or degradation of the material towards a region of zero strength are deduced.