Review and Comparison of Numerical Implementations for Cosserat Plasticity

The seminal paper of Muhlhaus and Vardoulakis (1987) led to an extensive study of generalised continuum plasticity models for numerical modelling of localisation of deformation. While different models and numerical implementations have been proposed in the literature, all capable of capturing the initial development of localisation, there is a lack of comparative studies to highlight the differences between models and their numerical implementations. In this work we present a review of existing numerical implementations of Cosserat plasticity models. We then implement a number of these models and finite elements within a commercial code to provide a comparison of the localisation behaviour based on numerical results of a simple test.