Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-b-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/paper-1/section-c/c12/solution

Compression and stretch viewed on rotated faces. To isolate shear, take equal small principal strains , . A square with sides at to these directions becomes a rhombus: adjacent side lengths are unchanged to first order, but their right angle changes by . In axes rotated through , the same strain tensor has zero diagonal entries and off-diagonal entries of magnitude .
The pure shear from opposite principal strains therefore has engineering shear strain , not . Equal opposite principal stresses give purely tangential traction of magnitude on those rotated faces. Hence
If the compression and stretch are not equal and opposite, an additional dilatational strain remains; their deviatoric part still supplies shear.
Figure 1.
Original comparison of compression and transverse extension with the same stress resolved as shear on faces rotated through 45 degrees; deformation is exaggerated
. Details.
The shaft's torsional stiffness. At radius , an end twist over length gives tangential displacement and shear angle . The local shear stress is . An annular area contributes torque , so
Thus torsion of a solid circular shaft gives
Here is the polar second moment of area, in , not a mass moment of inertia. This is the transmitted torque magnitude; the shaft's restoring couple opposes the twist. The formula assumes small elastic shear and a circular uniform section.

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