In this work the usability of automatic differentiation (AD) is demonstrated for the development of elasto-plastic solid models. The main dificulty in implementing plasticity models in an existing finite element code, as perceived by the authors, is the implementation of the consistent tangent matrix of the residual vector. Consistent tangent matrices can only be computed analytically when a closed form for the stress response can be obtained as a result of a deformation increment. In other cases only a aproximate tangent matrix can be developed. Using AD, consistent tangent matrices can be computed in function of the computation of the stress increment.
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