Solution

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

For , and . Differentiating the spherically symmetric deformation gives
For an orientation-preserving spherically symmetric deformation with positive radius, and . The radial direction and its perpendicular plane are eigenspaces of this positive symmetric matrix, so
At a positive diagonal matrix , every diagonal rotation with two minus signs commutes with . The supplied equivariance relation therefore forces to be a diagonal matrix: each off-diagonal entry changes sign under one such rotation while stays fixed. Varying a positive diagonal entry shows that the diagonal entries of are . Permutation symmetry of implies when .
Choose a rotation whose first column is . Applying equivariance to now gives
with the derivatives evaluated at . Thus the stress has one radial and one repeated tangential principal value, independently of the choice of tangent basis.

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