Abstract

This paper is focused on a new optimization variant of the shear strength reduction (OPT-SSR) in non-associated Mohr-Coulomb plasticity. The OPT-SSR method mimics the limit analysis problem and enables to compute the factor of safety without performing an elasto-plastic analysis. It is shown that this optimization problem is well defined and closely related to recently developed Davis approaches used in combination with the standard SSR method. Next, the duality between the static and kinematic principles of OPT-SSR is introduced. For the numerical solution, a regularization method is suggested.