Past exam of the elasticity and plasticity course of the University of Oxford / 2009 / 1

The infinitesimal strain tensor is the symmetric part of the displacement gradient tensor:Its diagonal entries are infinitesimal normal extensions; twice an off-diagonal entry is the corresponding engineering shear strain. An infinitesimal rigid rotation has an antisymmetric displacement gradient tensor and therefore contributes no linearized strain.

For a surface with unit normal $\mathbf{n}$, traction is $t_i={\tau }_{ij}{n}_j$. Thus ${\tau }_{ij}$ is the $i$th force-per-area component on a plane whose positive normal is ${\mathbf{e}}_j$. Diagonal entries are normal stresses and off-diagonal entries are shear stresses, with tensile normal stress positive in this convention.

The symmetric strain has six independent components and so does the symmetric stress. A general linear map between these two six-dimensional spaces therefore hasEquivalently choose the minor symmetries $C_{ijkl}=C_{jikl}=C_{ijlk}$. Components antisymmetric in the strain indices have no observable effect and are omitted from this representative.

A further distinction is important: if a strain energy density exists, $C_{ijkl}={\partial }^{2}W/(\partial e_{ij}\partial e_{kl})$ has the major symmetry $C_{ijkl}=C_{klij}$. Then the six-by-six map is symmetric and has $6\cdot 7/2=21$ independent coefficients. Thus 36 follows from the two stated tensor symmetries alone; 21 additionally uses the energy/reciprocity assumption, as in the variational setting later in the paper. These are the minor and major symmetries of linear elasticity.

Differentiating the displacement givesThe isotropic stress is diagonal, withThe two transverse traction-free conditions set the latter entries to zero. Hence $\lambda =2\nu (\lambda +\mu )$ andSubstitution shows $E=2\mu (1+\nu )$; solving for the two Lamé parameters givesTo determine the allowed interval without assuming signs not given, put $K=\lambda +2\mu /3>0$. Then $\nu =(3K-2\mu )/[2(3K+\mu )]$, soTherefore $\boxed{-1<\nu <1/2}$. The endpoints would require a degenerate elastic modulus, so they are excluded by the strict material inequalities.

The perturbation preserves the prescribed displacement because $\mathbf{w}=0$ on the boundary. Strain varies as $e_{ij}(\mathbf{u}+\alpha \mathbf{w})=e_{ij}(\mathbf{u})+\alpha (w_{i,j}+w_{j,i})/2$. Taylor expansion of the strain energy density givesSymmetry of the stress makes its contraction with the two symmetric terms equal, henceA minimizer must have zero first variation for both signs of $\alpha$. Integrating by parts and using the zero boundary variation yields ${\int }_B(-{\partial }_j{\tau }_{ij}-\rho g_i)w_{i}dV=0$. The fundamental lemma of the calculus of variations, applied to arbitrary compactly supported variations, givesThis is the static momentum equation. Fixed-displacement data remove the surface variation; prescribed tractions would instead appear through boundary work in the potential energy.