This book provides an overview of direct methods such as limit and shakedown analysis, which are intended to do away with the need for cumbersome step-by-step calculations and determine the loading limits of mechanical structures under monotone, cyclic or variable loading with unknown loading history. The respective contributions demonstrate how tremendous advances in numerical methods, especially in optimization, have contributed to the success of direct methods and their practical applicability to engineering problems in structural mechanics, pavement and general soil mechanics, as well as the design of composite materials. The contents reflect the outcomes of the 8th Workshop "Direct Methods in Limit States of Structures and Materials," held in Athens, Greece in September 2024.

Autorentext

Konstantinos Spiliopoulos is Professor of Structural Mechanics at the Institute of Structural Analysis & Antiseismic Research of the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from NTUA, an MSc from Imperial College in Concrete Structures and a PhD Degree from the Aeronautics Department of Imperial College. His research spans many different areas of Structural Mechanics, such as Inelasticity, Direct Methods for Limit States, Nonlinear Reinforced Concrete Analysis (NRCA), Earthquake Engineering, Graph theory, Mathematical Programming, Large Displacements and Strains, Large Rotations. He has published 35 papers in top rated international journals, 9 chapters in edited refereed books and has made 71 contributions in international conferences. He is editor and co-editor of 3 books. Work on NRCA has been adopted by the ADINA software.

Dieter Weichert graduated from RWTH-Aachen University in Mechanical Engineering, obtained his Dr.-degree and Habilitation from Ruhr-University Bochum. He held professional, academic and managing positions at Krupp-Brüninghaus GmbH (Germany), American University of Beirut, Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, Institut des Sciences Appliquées de Rouen and RWTH-Aachen University. He was active as consultant for private and public organisations until retirement in 2013. Fields of scientific interest: Solid Mechanics, Inelasticity, Failure of Materials and Structures, Composites, Biomechanics. He is author, co-author, editor, co-editor of more than 300 papers and 9 books.