Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 75 3 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
With no net body force, the tensile resultant is constant along the thread: . In material coordinates , volume conservation gives . ThusThe material Jacobian satisfies . Integrating with givesThis remains valid while . The even profile now specified ensures symmetric endpoints .
For and , direct integration yieldsFor , instead . A constant tensile gives and the finite blow-up timePut and . For fixed nonzero , the arctangent tends to , whereas for the uniform profile the whole length has the same thinning. Consequently the localized-neck and uniform-thread stretching exponents areA nonuniform thread's divergent integral is concentrated in a material interval near its quadratic minimum. Its width shrinks like while the Jacobian grows like , yielding . The remote ends no longer affect this leading coefficient, explaining independence from . For every element contributes the same stretch. The limits and do not commute.