In this paper the shakedown limit load is determined for a long radius 90-deg pipe bend using two different techniques. The first technique is a simplified technique which utilizes small displacement formulation and elastic–perfectly plastic material model. The second technique is an iterative based technique which uses the same elastic–perfectly plastic material model, but incorporates large displacement effects accounting for geometric nonlinearity. Both techniques use the finite element method for analysis. The pipe bend is subjected to constant internal pressure magnitudes and cyclic bending moments. The cyclic bending loading includes three different loading patterns, namely, in-plane closing, in-plane opening, and out-of-plane bending. The simplified technique determines the shakedown limit load (moment) without the need to perform full cyclic loading simulations or conventional iterative elastic techniques. Instead, the shakedown limit moment is determined by performing two analyses, namely, an elastic analysis and an elastic–plastic analysis. By extracting the results of the two analyses, the shakedown limit moment is determined through the calculation of the residual stresses developed in the pipe bend. The iterative large displacement technique determines the shakedown limit moment in an iterative manner by performing a series of full elastic–plastic cyclic loading simulations. The shakedown limit moment output by the simplified technique (small displacement) is used by the iterative large displacement technique as an initial iterative value. The iterations proceed until an applied moment guarantees a structure developed residual stress, at load removal, equal to or slightly less than the material yield strength. The shakedown limit moments output by both techniques are used to generate shakedown diagrams of the pipe bend for a spectrum of constant internal pressure magnitudes for the three loading patterns stated earlier. The maximum moment carrying capacity (limit moment) the pipe bend can withstand and the elastic limit are also determined and imposed on the shakedown diagram of the pipe bend. Comparison between the shakedown diagrams generated by the two techniques, for the three loading patterns, is presented.
