A Historical View on Shakedown Theory

摘要

Plastic design started in the early 20th century with the arrival of steel constructions in civil engineering. The objective was to determine the load carrying capacity in particular of steel bridges and steel skeleton buildings beyond the elastic limit. The related studies were first focused on monotonically increasing, "dead" loading. From this point of view they were directly related to the ancient question of determining the load carrying capacity of masonry construction like domes of churches. It was in the extension of these studies that the problem of plastic design under variable loads came into the picture. Martin Gruning was the first to be attracted by the beneficial effect of limited plastic deformation in redundant elements in hyperstatic structures and opened the door to the fascinating theory of shakedown.