The obstacle problem for an elastoplastic body (Q922029)

The difficulties encountered by researchers in plastic-work hardening materials were mainly caused by inability to select a proper function space for strains and displacements. This difficulty was by-passed in such classical treatises as that of \textit{G. Duvant} and \textit{J. L. Lions} [Inequalities in mechanics and physics (1976; Zbl 0331.35002)]. For perfect plasticity a number of authors lead by Suquet [e.g.: \textit{P. M. Suquet}, J. Méc. 20, 3-39 (1981; Zbl 0474.73030); Res. Notes Math. 46, 184-197 (1981; Zbl 0453.73040)] abandoned the Sobolev spaces and proved existence of solutions for the displacement problem in the space BD(\(\Omega\)) of bounded functions with the norm \(\| u\| =\| u\|_{L^ 1(\Omega)}+\| \epsilon (u)\|_{{\mathcal M}}\), where \({\mathcal M}\) is the space of measures assigned to the \(3\times 3\) symmetric matrices of strain components (which must not be identified with stress components!). \textit{R. Temam} and \textit{G. Strang} [e.g.: J. Méc. 19, 493-527 (1980; Zbl 0465.73033)] avoided some of the difficulties by using duality arguments. The present authors formulate the plastic-work hardening problems in product spaces with two models of plasticity considered. One is based on displacement-plastic strain, the other is the well-known Hencky model. Existence of solutions are proved by assuming compatibility and so called ``safe load'' condition.