A mathematical study of plasticity.

This thesis is primarily a mathematical treatise on plasticity in which the author has endeavoured to give a complete and systematic presentation of the subject. It begins with a general description of the observed mechanical behaviour of materials and from this emerges the concept of an 'ideal plastic material' which provides the physical model for the classical mathematical theory of plasticity... The final chapter of this thesis does not follow the 'plasticity' theme of the first four chapters. It is, however, included as an illustration of the numerical solution of the biharmonic equation. The finite difference method is used to solve the eccentric annulus problem for various combinations of boundary and loading conditions and some representative solutions are presented. (These solutions were obtained using the Elliott 503 digital computer at the University of Tasmania. and an ALGOL print-up of the author's computer program is included in Appendix 4).