An explicit objective isotropic example is , with , , and , . On , and , so at while the shear nominal stress is the displayed cubic. The natural-state quadratic energy has Lamé parameters , and the shear speed is .
Elastic stiffness tensor 2026-10-14
An elastic stiffness tensor maps a small displacement gradient tensor to the stress tensor. Minor symmetries in each index pair ensure symmetric stress and dependence only on symmetric strain; major symmetry follows from an elastic energy and underlies reciprocity. Stability requires positive elastic energy on nonzero strains. In an isotropic material, , with Lamé parameters .
Elastic wave Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
An elastic wave propagates a disturbance through an elastic solid. Small displacements in linear elasticity satisfy a vector wave equation governed by mass density and the two Lamé parameters.
Fix a positive shear modulus and let the other Lamé parameter tend to infinity in . If strain and stress converge to finite limits and differentiation commutes with the limit, taking the trace shows . Thus and for . Force balance becomes the displayed Stokes equation, with an elastic shear modulus in place of fluid dynamic viscosity. The vanishing volumetric strain is the linearization of elastic incompressibility .
Every three-dimensional fourth-rank Cartesian tensor invariant under all proper rotations has the displayed form, without assuming index-interchange symmetry. Half-turns about the coordinate axes force every nonzero component to contain each coordinate label an even number of times. The surviving patterns have four equal labels or two equal pairs. Axis permutations identify the latter with , and , while all four-equal components share a value .
Evaluate the component with four copies of . Multilinearity gives , which must equal by rotational invariance. Hence , proving the formula. Conversely each pairing of Kronecker deltas is invariant under any orthogonal transformation. For symmetric strain only and matter, giving the two Lamé parameters of isotropic elasticity on tensor components.
At a stress-free natural reference state, an objective isotropic hyperelastic material with energy per unit mass has , where . Twice differentiating gives the displayed Lamé parameters and the usual elastic stiffness tensor. A prestressed reference requires initial-stress corrections.
Differentiating the displacement gives
The isotropic stress is diagonal, with
The two transverse traction-free conditions set the latter entries to zero. Hence and
Substitution shows ; solving for the two Lamé parameters gives
To determine the allowed interval without assuming signs not given, put . Then , so
Therefore . The endpoints would require a degenerate elastic modulus, so they are excluded by the strict material inequalities.
Substituting the sinusoidal plane wave into the Navier-Cauchy equation gives , , and because . Equality of the amplitudes is therefore
This is an eigenvalue problem for the acoustic tensor . Choosing a nonzero amplitude parallel to gives ; choosing any nonzero amplitude perpendicular to gives . For positive mass density and stable Lamé parameters, both squared speeds are positive. These choices construct nonzero solutions explicitly, proving existence.
Assume homogeneous Lamé parameters, with and positive bulk modulus . For spherical symmetry, write and . Radial force balance is . The given linear elasticity relations imply
Substitution into radial force balance gives
Thus
The volumetric strain is , and the trace of the stress tensor is
Since is constant, . The radial elastic compatibility condition follows:
This condition is local to a region governed by homogeneous linear elasticity; it is not a constitutive condition for a plastically deforming region.
Let
At maximum pressure, the stress is the field from part (c) with and . Under the assumed elastic unloading, previously accumulated plastic strain is frozen. Therefore it is the stress increment, rather than the total stress, that satisfies homogeneous linear elasticity and radial elastic compatibility. Applying the superposition principle, a pressure change produces the elastic increments
They have zero far-field stress and change the wall traction from to . These increments are the same in the formerly plastic and formerly elastic regions because their elastic Lamé parameters agree. Adding them to the maximum-load field gives
and
These formulae retain : it records the plastic loading history and is not the instantaneous loading-front formula with substituted for . If the entire return is elastic, setting gives the residual stress after removal of the applied pressure.
To check admissibility, examine the signed difference of the principal stresses in the formerly plastic shell:
It immediately moves into the interior of the Tresca yield criterion when unloading starts. It can next reach the opposite limit . For fixed , is largest at and stays above . At the wall,
There is no earlier violation in the outer region. Indeed,
so its magnitude is no larger than , which has already been controlled by the shell calculation. Hence the first reverse yielding occurs at the cavity wall, with
If , the stress stays within the yield surface throughout unloading to zero. If , it reaches reverse yield exactly at ; further unloading would produce reverse plastic deformation. If , reverse plastic deformation starts while the applied pressure is still positive. Thus
If “yield again while unloaded” includes first touching the yield surface at the final endpoint, the corresponding condition is . The displayed elastic unloading fields are physically valid only for ; beyond that interval a new reverse-plastic region must be solved for. Continuing the elastic formula to when would violate the given Tresca yield criterion.
Use material coordinates and write the placement as . The strain energy density in the printed convention is per unit reference mass. It is convenient to use the conventional first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor , so
Assume the undeformed reference state is stress-free. With and infinitesimal strain tensor , material isotropy and material frame indifference give the quadratic expansion
Consequently the Lamé parameters from hyperelastic energy Hessian are
Indeed, differentiating the quadratic expression twice gives
the elastic stiffness tensor of linear elasticity. A prestressed reference state requires the corresponding initial-stress corrections; the displayed formula concerns the natural state.
For a plane elastic wave, , put and . Balance of momentum without body force becomes
This is a material-coordinate equation: the reference density cancels between inertia and nominal stress. If , the first-order system has characteristic speeds and right eigenvectors . Along a characteristic curve with , its differential compatibility relation is
This follows by multiplying the system by the left eigenvector . It does not assert the existence of globally integrable Riemann invariants for an arbitrary three-component constitutive law.
There is a necessary qualification to the finite-amplitude transverse request. Set and , so . The longitudinal momentum equation requires
Thus arbitrary nonuniform pure transverse profiles are possible only if the compatibility condition for pure nonlinear transverse waves holds:
The third component vanishes by the reflection symmetry implied by isotropy and objectivity. The shear equation then closes:
General compressible hyperelastic material assumptions alone do not imply the required compatibility. For a concrete counterexample, take the Saint Venant–Kirchhoff hyperelastic energy
For , this becomes
At , . A varying shear therefore produces a longitudinal force and cannot preserve . Infinitesimal transverse waves do exist, because this coupling is second order, but a general pure finite-amplitude transverse wave does not.
The compatible nonlinear shear energy class is nonempty and can be genuinely nonlinear. Define , , and, for , take
This is objective and isotropic. Near , , so it has the specified Lamé parameters. On the plane deformation above, and . Hence at , while
For positive , the relevant incremental plane moduli are positive. This supplies an explicit stable pure transverse family and, when , amplitude-dependent wave speed.
For any compatible family, let
The equations and give the Riemann invariants
Consider the initially undisturbed half-space . A right-going simple wave has the incoming invariant , so . Denote the prescribed boundary nominal stress by . The physical boundary traction, whose outward normal is , is . Invert the monotone law to obtain . The wave state emitted at boundary time is transported along
Ahead of the leading front the state is zero. Before characteristic crossing, these equations determine the unique emission time for each disturbed point. The displacement itself is also determined, rather than just its derivatives:
Differentiating the implicit emission relation verifies and , so this is the complete pre-shock simple wave solution.
Write . The boundary-generated characteristic curves lose invertibility when
Thus the characteristic crossing in a boundary-generated elastic simple wave criterion is
Here . A smoothly increasing boundary stress therefore steepens into a shock wave only when later states travel faster: . Increasing stress alone is insufficient. For the compatible example with and , , so a nonzero increasing ramp produces finite-time crossing. For all rays are parallel and no such shock forms. This criterion locates the first gradient singularity; subsequent discontinuous evolution additionally requires the jump conditions and an admissibility condition.
For a general vector simple wave, replace the pure-shear line by an integral curve
Substitution gives , with the same emission construction and crossing criterion. Boundary tractions must lie on this one-family curve. Generic finite-amplitude quasi-transverse waves may contain longitudinal displacement; arbitrary vector boundary forcing need not generate a single simple wave.
Use fixed spatial coordinates in a stationary heterogeneous Earth and define the operator
Here the elastic stiffness tensor has its minor and major symmetries, and the physical body force per unit volume is . The retarded elastodynamic Green tensor is the displacement in direction due to a unit physical force impulse in direction at :
It satisfies the actual Earth's homogeneous boundary conditions, including zero traction on the free surface and continuity of displacement and traction at bonded internal interfaces. Integration through gives , with . No spherical symmetry is required.
For zero initial conditions, form the convolution
Applying to this expression uses the defining Dirac delta function to give . Causality gives zero initial conditions, and each Green column supplies the required boundary conditions. The positive-energy uniqueness argument then identifies this expression with the physical response. The source factor is because is force per unit mass, whereas the Green tensor was normalized to unit force.
A force dipole is a limiting pair of opposite point forces separated by a small vector. Put at and at , and hold fixed as . Expansion of the two Dirac delta functions gives
Its resultant force is zero, and integration by parts gives its radiated displacement as . Thus the source derivative of the elastodynamic Green tensor represents a dipole with force direction and separation direction .
For the surface source choose a normal from the minus side to the plus side and define
The same normal is used in both tractions. If the elastic coefficients are continuous through the surface, the distributional gradient of a piecewise smooth displacement is . Its stress therefore has a singular part . Taking the divergence includes the regular stress jump, so a field satisfying the source-free equations on both sides has equivalent source
In particular, the signs follow from the chosen jump convention, not from an unspecified orientation. The elastodynamic surface-jump representation is consequently
with the Green tensor evaluated at . The first term is a surface distribution of forces, and the second is a surface distribution of dipoles.
One can derive the same formula without multiplying discontinuous material coefficients by a surface delta. Apply integration by parts on the two sides of to the field and the reciprocal Green field . Major symmetry cancels the volume strain terms; the spatial identity is
when the temporal terms are handled by the retarded time convolution. More explicitly, take , extend the zero-initial-data solution causally to , and integrate over all source times. Integration by parts cancels the two temporal terms, with zero endpoint terms; the causal supports subsequently reduce the representation to . The Green impulse contributes on the left. The two outward face normals are and , so their sum on the right is . Moving it to the other side gives . The same identity applied to two force Green fields with interchanged source and receiver proves the reciprocal relation ; hence the displayed surface formula follows. On a bonded material interface the Green displacement and common Green traction are continuous: is then the unambiguous version of the dipole term, evaluated with the matching one-sided coefficients. External free-surface terms vanish because both tractions vanish.
For a fault in isotropic material, the Lamé parameters give
Tangential slip obeys , and ordinary fault traction is continuous across the two faces. Therefore the source is a double-couple fault source with
For a uniform patch of area with and , its integrated seismic moment tensor is
The dipole is a force in the slip direction separated in the normal direction; the dipole is a normal force separated in the slip direction. Their equal and opposite torques cancel. The symmetric trace-free seismic moment tensor has eigenvalues , with zero resultant force and torque. A temporal stress drop on a fault is not a jump of traction between its two simultaneously matching faces; it does not add a single-force layer to this tangential-slip representation.
For an orthogonal change of Cartesian coordinates , an ordinary rank- tensor transforms by
An isotropic tensor is invariant under such rotations. Orthogonality gives , so transforming any of the three products of two Kronecker deltas leaves it unchanged. Their linear combination with arbitrary scalar coefficients is therefore isotropic.
For completeness, these three products exhaust the rank-four isotropic tensors in three dimensions. Half-turns about coordinate axes force a nonzero component to contain each coordinate label an even number of times. Axis interchanges then leave just the values , , and . Rotating the first two axes by gives , so . These component values are exactly those of the three-delta-product expression. Thus isotropy of the elastic medium gives this form for its elasticity tensor.
Contracting with the symmetric strain gives
These are the Lamé parameters. Taking the trace determines the scalar part of the strain:
Since , the stored strain energy density is
A nonzero traceless test strain proves necessity of , and a pure scalar strain proves necessity of . Conversely these two conditions make both terms nonnegative for every strain. Thus nonnegative isotropic elastic strain energy is equivalent to
Complete the crack normal to an orthonormal basis with the first two vectors in the crack plane. The seismic moment tensor is diagonal in this basis:
Each term gives an elastic force dipole, : two equal and opposite forces in direction , separated along , with moment . Hence there are two identical in-plane dipoles of strength and one normal dipole of strength . For positive opening and ordinary positive Lamé parameters, all are extensional and the normal one is larger by .
More generally, stable isotropic linear elasticity requires and . These imply , so the normal dipole has greater magnitude even if an auxetic material has negative and compressive in-plane dipoles. The point source has zero net force, because it differentiates a delta function, and zero net torque, because its moment tensor is symmetric. Its normal moment distinguishes opening from a pure shear dislocation.
Use local coordinates with the interface , solid below and fluid above, and choose the P-SV displacement potentials convention , . Let the reflected P and SV potential wave amplitudes be , while the transmitted P wave amplitude is . All four waves have the same tangential slowness
The incident and transmitted retarded times have negative , while elastic waves have positive . At the interface all waveform derivatives therefore have the same argument. displacement field continuity gives
With Lamé parameters and , the shear and normal stresses follow directly from differentiation:
The fluid has no shear traction, so the coefficient of in must vanish:
The coefficient of in the solid stress is ; in the fluid it is . Thus
These are the three required matching conditions; tangential displacement field need not be continuous at a solid–inviscid-fluid boundary.
Put and . From (2), . In (1), the coefficient of simplifies because . Hence . Substitute this into (3) to obtain
Therefore the solid-fluid P-wave transmission coefficient is
Division by was only an elimination device; the final expression extends continuously to . The normal-incidence value is . This is a potential coefficient; longitudinal displacement field transmission additionally multiplies it by . The original PDF's bracket lies in the denominator and contains and . The converted TeX misplaces the bracket, substitutes for , and loses the final cosine.
Take a stable isotropic elastic material with mass density and Lamé parameters , where and . Its elastic stiffness tensor is
The P wave is longitudinal and the S wave transverse. The wavefront-transport alternative and all three steps of the Love wave alternative are given below.
Under an orthogonal change of Cartesian coordinates with , a rank- Cartesian tensor transforms as , summing repeated indices. An isotropic tensor is invariant under every rotation. For an isotropic fourth-rank tensor, half-turns about the coordinate axes eliminate components unless each coordinate label occurs an even number of times. Coordinate rotations make the remaining two-pair patterns depend on three constants , , . Invariance after rotating the first axis to gives . Hence
This is a direct proof of the rank-four isotropic decomposition, without assuming any prior interchange symmetry of the four indices. Each displayed delta pairing is itself rotation invariant.
For symmetric strain, contraction gives . Comparing with the Lamé parameters yields
Write and , so . Since , the strain energy density becomes
The two terms describe volumetric and shear deformation, respectively. Thus nonnegative isotropic elastic strain energy is equivalent to
Necessity also follows by taking a nonzero traceless strain and a pure dilation separately. The combination is the bulk modulus; strict inequalities give positive energy for every nonzero strain.
Elasticity describes recoverable deformation. For small displacements , the infinitesimal strain tensor is the symmetric part of the displacement gradient,
Its diagonal entries describe extension, while its off-diagonal entries describe shear. The engineering shear strain is ; the antisymmetric part of the displacement gradient is a small rigid rotation, not elastic strain.
The stress tensor specifies the force per unit area on each oriented plane: . Positive normal stress is tensile in the convention used here; tangential traction gives shear stress. In the absence of internal couples, angular-momentum balance makes the stress tensor symmetric. Force balance gives in static equilibrium, where is body force per unit volume.
Linear elasticity relates stress and strain. A homogeneous isotropic solid needs two independent elastic constants:
Here is the shear modulus and is the other Lamé parameter. For uniaxial loading, Young's modulus is , with lateral contraction described by Poisson's ratio . The bulk modulus is for a small hydrostatic compression. The relations between these constants are
Stable isotropic elastic strain energy density requires and , implying . The incompressible limit is approached as . Anisotropic crystals generally need more constants; the isotropic relations should not be imposed on arbitrary directions in such a crystal.
The elastic energy density is . In the isotropic linear model this becomes . The quadratic form explains why reversible loading stores energy and unloading can return it, unlike plastic deformation or a dissipative hysteresis cycle.
For a slender beam described by the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation, plane sections approximately remain plane. A fibre a distance from the neutral axis has axial strain , where is curvature, and stress . Integrating its moment about the neutral axis gives, with consistent signs,
is a second moment of area, with units of length to the fourth power; it is not a mass moment of inertia. For a rectangular section of width and thickness , , explaining the strong dependence of bending stiffness on thickness. For small transverse deflection , curvature is approximately , and the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation is with a suitable load-sign convention. A cantilever of length under end load has tip deflection and largest bending stress of magnitude , where is the furthest distance from the neutral axis.
In torsion of a solid circular shaft, a cross-section rotated by angle has shear strain . Therefore
Here is the polar second moment of area. A uniform shaft of length under constant torque twists by , and its largest shear stress is . Noncircular sections can warp, so replacing their torsional stiffness by times their polar area moment is not generally valid. Both bending and torsion formulas presume small, elastic deformations; exceeding the elastic limit can produce permanent deformation or fracture.
The Green-Lagrange strain tensor has eigenvalues . Its Frobenius norm and trace are invariant under the orthogonal principal-axis change, so
For the homogeneous dilation , put . Then . Differentiating the energy through gives the second Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor , and multiplication by gives the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor. Thus
The normals of the reference and deformed spheres point in the same radial direction. As , the reference traction magnitude tends to zero, while the current traction magnitude tends to infinity, provided , as for physically stable Lamé parameters. The negative signs of the stress coefficients for indicate compression.
There is no contradiction: the current area is times the reference area, so the same force divided by the vanishing current area has the larger stress. Indeed . The limiting map at is not itself an admissible deformation in continuum mechanics; the statement concerns the approach through positive . A degenerate choice would not have the asserted growth without bound.
Poisson solid 2026-10-14
An isotropic linear elasticity material with equal positive Lamé parameters has Poisson's ratio and the displayed compressional/shear speed ratio. This simplifying model fixes the relative amplitudes in the tensile-crack radiation pattern; it does not describe every stable isotropic solid.