PHY456H1S Continuum mechanics. Problem Set 1. Stress, Strain, Traction vector. Force free equilibrium.
Posted by peeterjoot on February 9, 2012
Disclaimer.
This problem set is as yet ungraded.
Problem Q1.
Statement
For the stress tensor
Find the corresponding strain tensor, assuming an isotropic solid with Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ration
.
Solution
We need to express the relation between stress and strain in terms of Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. In terms of Lam\’e parameters our model for the relations between stress and strain for an isotropic solid was given as
Computing the trace
allows us to invert the relationship
In terms of Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus
, our Lam\’e parameters were found to be
and
Our stress strain model for the relationship for an isotropic solid becomes
we find
or
As a sanity check note that this matches (5.12) of [1], although they use a notation of instead of
for Poisson’s ratio. We are now ready to tackle the problem. First we need the trace of the stress tensor
Expanding out the last bits of arithmetic the strain tensor is found to have the form
Note that this is dimensionless, unlike the stress.
Problem Q2.
Statement
Small displacement field in a material is given by
Find
\begin{enumerate}
\item the infinitesimal strain tensor ,
\item the principal strains and the corresponding principal axes at ,
\item Is the body under compression or expansion?
\end{enumerate}
Solution. infinitesimal strain tensor 
Diving right in, we have
In matrix form we have
Solution. principle strains and axes
At the point the strain tensor has the value
We wish to diagonalize this, solving the characteristic equation for the eigenvalues
We find the characteristic equation to be
This doesn’t appear to lend itself easily to manual solution (there are no obvious roots to factor out). As expected, since the matrix is symmetric, a plot (\ref{fig:continuumL8:continuumProblemSet1Q2fig1}) shows that all our roots are real
\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics[totalheight=0.2\textheight]{continuumProblemSet1Q2fig1}
\caption{Q2. Characteristic equation.}
\end{figure}
Numerically, we determine these roots to be
with the corresponding basis (orthonormal eigenvectors), the principle axes are
Solution. Is body under compression or expansion?
To consider this question, suppose that as in the previous part, we determine a basis for which our strain tensor is diagonal with respect to that basis at a given point
. We can then simplify the form of the stress tensor at that point in the object
We see that the stress tensor at this point is also necessarily diagonal if the strain is diagonal in that basis (with the implicit assumption here that we are talking about an isotropic material). Noting that the Poisson ratio is bounded according to
so if our trace is positive (as it is in this problem for all points ), then any positive principle strain value will result in a positive stress along that direction). For example at the point
of the previous part of this problem (for which
), we have
We see that at this point the and
components of stress is positive (expansion in those directions) regardless of the material, and provided that
(i.e. ) the material is under expansion in all directions. For
the material at that point is expanding in the
and
directions, but under compression in the
directions.
(save to disk and run with either Mathematica or the free Wolfram CDF player ( http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/ ) )
For a Mathematica notebook that visualizes this part of this problem see https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q2animated.cdf. This animates the stress tensor associated with the problem, for different points and values of Poisson’s ratio
, with Mathematica manipulate sliders available to alter these (as well as a zoom control to scale the graphic, keeping the orientation and scale fixed with any variation of the other parameters). This generalizes the solution of the problem (assuming I got it right for the specific
point of the problem). The vectors are the orthonormal eigenvectors of the tensor, scaled by the magnitude of the eigenvectors of the stress tensor (also diagonal in the basis of the diagonalized strain tensor at the point in question). For those directions that are under expansive stress, I’ve colored the vectors blue, and for compressive directions, I’ve colored the vectors red.
This requires either a Mathematica client or the free Wolfram CDF player, either of which can run the notebook after it is saved to your computer’s hard drive.
Problem Q3.
Statement
The stress tensor at a point has components given by
Find the traction vector across an area normal to the unit vector
Can you construct a tangent vector on this plane by inspection? What are the components of the force per unit area along the normal
and tangent
on that surface? (hint: projection of the traction vector.)
Solution
The traction vector, the force per unit volume that holds a body in equilibrium, in coordinate form was
where was the coordinates of the normal to the surface with area
. In matrix form, this is just
so our traction vector for this stress tensor and surface normal is just
We also want a vector in the plane, and can pick
or
It’s clear that either of these is normal to (the first can also be computed by normalizing
, and the second with one round of Gram-Schmidt). However, neither of these vectors in the plane are particularly interesting since they are completely arbitrary. Let’s instead compute the projection and rejection of the traction vector with respect to the normal. We find for the projection
Our rejection, the component of the traction vector in the plane, is
This gives us a another vector perpendicular to the normal
Wrapping up, we find the decomposition of the traction vector in the direction of the normal and its projection onto the plane to be
The components we can read off by inspection.
Problem Q4.
Statement
The stress tensor of a body is given by
Determine the constant ,
, and
if the body is in equilibrium.
Solution
In the absence of external forces our equilibrium condition was
In matrix form we wish to operate (to the left) with the gradient coordinate vector
So, our conditions for equilibrium will be satisfied when we have
provided , and
for integer
. If equilibrium is to hold along the
plane, then we must either also have
or also impose the restriction
(for integer
).
A couple other mathematica notebooks
Some of the hand calculations done in this problem set I’ve confirmed using Mathematica. Those notebooks are available here
\begin{itemize}
\item
https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q1.cdf
\item
https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q2.cdf
\item
https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q2animated.cdf
\item
https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q3.cdf
\end{itemize}
These all require either a Mathematica client or the free Wolfram CDF player. Note that I haven’t figured out a way to get a browser based CDF player to play these without explicit download.
References
[1] L.D. Landau, EM Lifshitz, JB Sykes, WH Reid, and E.H. Dill. Theory of elasticity: Vol. 7 of course of theoretical physics. 1960.
Nasser M. Abbasi said
When I download your CDF file for solution under probem Q2 above, which is:
https://raw.github.com/peeterjoot/physicsplay/master/notes/phy454/continuumProblemSet1Q2animated.cdf
and I run it on windows, using Mathematica 8.04, I get these errors when I open the CDF file
Part::partd: Part specification standardBasis[[1]] is longer than depth of object. >>
Part::partd: Part specification standardBasis[[1]] is longer than depth of object. >>
Part::partd: Part specification standardBasis[[2]] is longer than depth of object. >>
thank you,
–Nasser
peeterjoot said
Are these errors, or warnings?
I can’t reproduce the behavior that you see. I’m also running mathematica 8.0.4, and either don’t see these messages, or am not looking in the right place.
Nasser M. Abbasi said
I do not know how you are trying to reproduce it, but the steps are:
1. download the cdf file.
2. open mathematica
3. open the cdf file
4, Enable dynamics is not already enabled
now you will see the error. Clearly this is an error. trying to access out-of-bound index.
I am using windows 7, using M V 8.04
It happens all the time when I open the file.
–Nasser
peeterjoot said
That’s exactly what I did, and didn’t see the error, but if I restart Mathematica I see the error. I don’t understand the source of the error, do you? The odd thing is that a second shift-enter after the fact appears to clear the error.
peeterjoot said
I’m asking about this in the mathematica stack-exchange:
http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/1669/table-function-with-part-call-misbehaving-but-only-after-initial-startup-of-m
I’ll update the online source for this .cdf, presuming that I find an answer to my question. Until then, you can use the workaround of re-evaluating the expression.
peeterjoot said
should be fixed now. I needed selected Dynamic and DynamicModule calls to make things work properly on initial load.
Nasser M. Abbasi said
btw, there is no need to put the CDF’s as links in the way you did. Instead, you can now embed the CDF directly in the web page, so that one can run them on the web, just like an applet. This makes it easier for someone to run them. Information how to do this is here
http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/deploying-cdf/web-delivery.html
–Nasser
peeterjoot said
I am not self hosting this wordpress site, and looking for how to embed with wordpress (where it is not easy to embed javascript), I find:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wolfram-cdf-plugin/
The install method does not appear to work for non-self hosting wordpress installations, since I don’t see ‘Plugins -> Add New’ anywhere in the admin configuration.
Nasser M. Abbasi said
I do not know anything about wordpress. So can’t help with CDF inside wordpress.
I read before of others having hard time also with using CDF in wordpress.
good luck on this.
–Nasser
peeterjoot said
Looked a bit more and found the following:
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/39770/how-to-install-a-plugin-for-a-free-wordpress-site
and:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
(you can’t install plugins on wordpress.com)
… looks like I’m out of luck (unless I fork out for my own domain and webhosting). I found:
http://www.hostgator.com/promo/wordpress-hosting.shtml
which is only a few bucks a month, but not really justified just to run the CDF plugin.