Past exam of the elasticity and plasticity course of the University of Oxford / 2009 / 2 / b / i / Solution

The Airy stress function determines the in-plane stress through its second derivatives. If two functions give the same stress, their difference $B$ has $B_{xx}=B_{xy}=B_{yy}=0$. On a connected domain this implies that its gradient is constant. Thereforeis exactly the local affine gauge freedom. It also preserves biharmonicity. An imposed decay condition for $A$ can fix this freedom; adding an arbitrary biharmonic function would usually change the physical stress and is not a gauge transformation.