Plastic bending

Plastic bending is a nonlinear behaviour particular to members made of ductile materials that frequently achieve much greater ultimate bending strength than indicated by a linear elastic bending analysis. In both the plastic and elastic bending analyses of a straight beam, it is assumed that the strain distribution is linear about the neutral axis (plane sections remain plane). In an elastic analysis this assumption leads to a linear stress distribution but in a plastic analysis the resulting stress distribution is nonlinear and is dependent on the beam’s material.