Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-elasticity-and-plasticity-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2008/1/b/solution

Choose zero energy in the unstrained state. The required strain energy density is
Its variation is , giving the prescribed stress as the tensor gradient. This variational notation handles the symmetric off-diagonal components without a spurious factor of two.
Decompose into orthogonal deviatoric and spherical parts. Then
The two squares vanish together only for . Thus and are sufficient for positive definiteness. They are necessary by testing a nonzero trace-free strain and a pure dilation separately. Equivalently both shear modulus and bulk modulus must be positive.

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