Tutorial Problems

1. Consider a prismatic bar of circular cross-section (length l and radius r) subjected to an

axial tensile load P . The material has Youngs modulus E and Poissons ratio .

(i) Find the % change in volume of the bar as a result of its elastic deformation.
(ii) What is the condition under which the material is elastically incompressible (no
volume change under elastic deformation)?

2. The displacement field of an elastic body is given by

u1 = kx2 , u2 = 0, u3 = 0 (k = 104 )

(i) Evaluate the strain and rotation tensors,

 and

, corresponding to the above
deformation field.
(ii) Is the above deformation homogeneous?
(iii) Consider the deformation of a unit square in the x1 x2 plane with sides oriented
along the coordinate directions. Find the change in length of its diagonals using
geometry.
(iv) Find the change in length of the same using the strain tensor.

3. Given two matrices

 0 0 /4 3/4 0
A = 0 /2 0 , B = 3/4 /4 0
0 0 /2 0 0 /2

determine if these are admissible as the components of the same strain tensor in two
different coordinate frames.

4. The displacement field associated with a rigid body rotation by an angle about the
coordinate axis e3 is

u1 = x1 (cos 1) + x2 sin , u2 = x2 (cos 1) x1 sin , u3 = 0

(i) Calculate the components of the strain

 and rotation

tensors.
(ii) Show that the strain components are negligible only if the angle of rotation is small.

5. If an alternative strain tensor E

is defined as

1 T T


E

= u

+ u

+ u

u

2
show that E
vanishes for the case of rigid body rotation in the previous problem for any
angle of rotation .
(NB: E
is the so called Lagrangian strain tensor used in large deformation theories).