A novel accurate and computationally efficient integration approach to viscoplastic constitutive model

A novel, accurate, and computationally efficient integration approach is developed to integrate small strain viscoplastic constitutive equations involving nonlinear coupled first-order ordinary differential equations. The developed integration scheme is achieved by a combination of the implicit backward Euler difference approximation and the implicit asymptotic integration. For the uniaxial loading case, the developed integration scheme produces accurate results irrespective of time steps. For the multiaxial loading case, the accuracy and computational efficiency of the developed integration scheme are better than those of either the implicit backward Euler difference approximation or the implicit asymptotic integration. The simplicity of the developed integration scheme is equivalent to that of the implicit backward Euler difference approximation since it also reduces the solution of integrated constitutive equations to the solution of a single nonlinear equation. The algorithm tangent constitutive matrix derived for the developed integration scheme is consistent with the integration algorithm and preserves the quadratic convergence of the Newton–Raphson method for global iterations.