Classical plasticity analysis techniques have been used by Geotechnical Engineers for many years. Computational Limit Analysis extends this capability to allow the analysis of any problem geometry and, unlike Limit Equilbrium approaches, requires only the assumption of ideal plastic behaviour.  It is this very amenable to the provision of easy to use but powerful and practical design and analysis tools. 

Much of my work is built around the Discontinuity Layout Optimization (DLO) technique, co-developed with colleague Matthew Gilbert in 2007. This is a computational limit analysis procedure which provides visually clear failure mechanisms and accurate predictions of the associated margin of safety. At the heart of the DLO procedure is a simple yet robust and highly efficient algorithm that can identify the critical failure mechanism from a very large number of possibilities. By using code and methods developed by CMD/Geotechnics group researchers, spin-out company LimitState, have produced the LimitState:GEO commercial software application for geotechnical applications. The software is now widely used by practitioners, and is free for academic use.

Further work is extending the application of the method from analysis tools to design optimization tools.