A Projection Approach to the Numerical Analysis of Limit Load Problems

This paper proposes a numerical scheme to approximate the solution of (vectorial) limit load problems. The method makes use of a strictly convex perturbation of the problem, which corresponds to a projection of the deformation field under bounded deformation and incompressibility constraints. The discretized formulation of this perturbation converges to the solution of the original landslide problem when the amplitude of the perturbation tends to zero. The projection is computed numerically with a multi-steps gradient descent on the dual formation of the problem.