Estimation of residual plastic strains from boundary displacement measurements (Q807237)

Mura proposed a nondestructing testing method for the evaluation of strains inside an elastic-plastic body which has been subjected to loading processes. This method rests on the use of the boundary integral equation method (BIEM) in order to relate residual displacements on the surface to plastic deformation in bulk. The problem considered can be regarded as an ``inverse problem'', specifically as a problem in the context of deterministic parameter identification associated to a linear model of a nondynamical (non- evolutive) system. The abundant literature on structural identification is mostly concerned with linear dynamics. Inverse problems in statistics associated to elastic-plastic nonevolutive and evolutive models have been studied in deterministic, statistical and Bayesian contexts. Here we expound a few concepts discussed earlier and present some remarks on Mura's proposal, from the standpoint of static structural identification and computational mechanics. Specifically, alternative solution methods are examined and the role of ill-conditioning (to be expected in most inverse problems) is discussed also on the basis of some numerical tests. Clearly, these topics are meant to be complementary (rather than overlapping) when compared with the recent developments.