Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-solid-mechanics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2010/1/b/solution
Past exam of the solid mechanics course of the University of Oxford 2010 1 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
For small displacement gradients write . Taylor expansion around the stress-free reference state givesThe linear term vanishes because . Drop the irrelevant constant and retain the quadratic term:The major symmetry follows from equality of mixed second derivatives. For a skew matrix , stress covariance along givesDifferentiation at zero yields . Thus for every skew matrix, which forces the input minor symmetry . Combining it with the major symmetry gives the output minor symmetry as well:These identify reference and spatial indices at . Decompose into symmetric and skew parts. Since and the major symmetry also eliminates the other cross term,Thus infinitesimal rotations cost no energy in the quadratic approximation.
New to topics? Read the docs here!