A Conservative Formulation for Plasticity

In this paper we propose a fully conservative form for the continuum equations governing rate-dependent and rate-independent plastic ow in metals. The conservation laws are valid for discontinuous as well as smooth solutions. In the rate-dependent case, the evolution equations are in divergence form, with the plastic strain being passively convected and augmented by source terms. In the rate-independent case, the conservation laws involve a Lagrange multiplier that is determined by a set of constraints; we show that Riemann problems for this system admit scale-invariant solutions.