The elastoplastic formulation of polygonal element method based on triangular finite meshes

A small strain and elastoplastic formulation of Polygonal Element Method (PEM) is developed for efficient analysis of elastoplastic solids. In this work, the polygonal elements are constructed based on traditional triangular finite meshes. The construction method of polygonal mesh can directly utilize the sophisticated triangularization algorithm and reduce the difficulty in generating polygonal elements. The Wachspress rational finite element basis function is used to construct the approximations of polygonal elements. The incremental variational form and a von Mises type model are<br />used for non-linear elastoplastic analysis. Several small strain elastoplastic numerical examples are presented to verify the advantages and the accuracy of the numerical formulation.