Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-solid-mechanics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2011/2/a/solution

In the classical smooth setting, a deformation in continuum mechanics is a sufficiently regular, injective map with . Injectivity excludes material interpenetration, and a positive determinant preserves orientation and local volume. We use regularity for these kinematics and additional differentiability where stress-divergence identities are applied.
Cauchy's stress theorem states that the contact force on an oriented surface element at a current point depends on the point and its unit normal, rather than on the shape of the chosen subbody. Thus the contact force on the boundary of a current subbody has the form . Static force balance, for a body force per unit current volume, is
for every subbody. A shrinking pillbox gives ; a shrinking tetrahedron then gives linear dependence on the normal, . Applying the divergence theorem and using arbitrary subbodies gives
If body force is specified per unit mass instead, replace by . Symmetry of follows additionally from conservation of angular momentum in the absence of body couples; it is not a consequence of force balance alone.

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