An inverse problem related to an elasto-plastic beam

Abstract We consider an elasto-plastic beam and address the following inverse problem: external forces have created some plastic strains in this beam, which therefore shows a residual observable deformation once the structure is load-free. Can we retrieve the loading history from this observation, or at least the plastic strains ? After proving the well-posedness of the forward problem, we show that the solution can be described in a semi-explicit way in the pure bending case, so that the forward problem amounts to a one dimensional non linear problem. Such problem is smooth enough for us to solve the inverse problem by using a classical least-square method, which is illustrated with the help of some numerical examples.