Development of Bifurcation Analysis Method for Rate Dependent Materials

In this study, a novel numerical method to analyze the bifurcation problemof a rate dependent material using the finite element method is proposed. The consistent stiffness matrix, which is required for a bifurcation analysis using the finite element method, for a rate dependent material is generally hard to compute, therefore, a computational method to calculate the tangent stiffness matrix based on a numerical differential is introduced so that exact bifurcation analyses for the rate dependent material can be conducted. A numerical example of the proposed method is demonstrated, and the adequacy of the proposed method is discussed.