On the superposition of work dissipation in Coulomb's soil (Q5945352)

The author deals with an important subject of solid mechanics, i.e. with the applicability of superposition principle to upper bound limit analysis of an elastic-perfectly plastic material with Coulomb yield criterion. It is shown that, in this type of plasticity, the superposition can be applied to the dissipation of work, subject to certain restricting conditions. One application of this result is the calculation of bearing capacity of a foundation lying on Coulomb soil. Finally, the author derives an improvement of upper bounds on surface tractions, obtained for a combination of two velocity fields, in order to be reduced below the values obtained for each separate field.