Unconventional cyclic plasticity model implementation for shell and plane stress elements in UMAT/Abaqus

Finite element simulations are widely used in several industrial sectors (civil, aerospace, mechanical, naval, biomedical, etc.) to design components or structures. Often, the resolution of highly non-linear problems requires the recurse to dense meshes with the consequent increase in computation time. This aspect becomes particularly relevant for cyclic mobility problems where repeated loading might affect the computational cost. Therefore, the efficiency of finite elements represents a crucial aspect of speeding up the design process. Past works of the authors focused on developing the additive hypoelastic-based and multiplicative hyperelastic-based constitutive equations of the Extended Subloading Surface model for three-dimensional finite elements adopting fully implicit integration schemes. In this paper, the constitutive equations of the Extended Subloading Surface theory are reformulated for shell and plane stress elements, aiming to obtain an efficient computational tool suitable for cyclic mobility problems. The numerical implementation considers isotropic hardening, kinematic hardening, and material anisotropy. Numerical solutions obtained utilising shell/plane stress and solids elements are also discussed.