Past exam of the solid mechanics course of the University of Oxford / 2011 / 2 / c

For $R=|x|>0$, $DR=\theta$ and $D\theta =(I-\theta \otimes \theta )/R$. Differentiating the spherically symmetric deformation givesFor an orientation-preserving spherically symmetric deformation with positive radius, $r>0$ and $r^{\prime }>0$. The radial direction and its perpendicular plane are eigenspaces of this positive symmetric matrix, soAt a positive diagonal matrix $D$, every diagonal rotation with two minus signs commutes with $D$. The supplied equivariance relation therefore forces $\hat{T}(D)$ to be a diagonal matrix: each off-diagonal entry changes sign under one such rotation while $D$ stays fixed. Varying a positive diagonal entry shows that the diagonal entries of $\hat{T}(D)$ are ${\Phi }_{,j}$. Permutation symmetry of $\Phi$ implies ${\Phi }_{,2}={\Phi }_{,3}$ when ${\lambda }_2={\lambda }_3$.

Choose a rotation whose first column is $\theta$. Applying equivariance to $F=QD{Q}^T$ now giveswith the derivatives evaluated at $(r^{\prime },r/R,r/R)$. Thus the stress has one radial and one repeated tangential principal value, independently of the choice of tangent basis.