Chapter 1

Introduction Objectives and Applications of Solid Mechanics

Solid Mechanics is a collection of physical laws, mathematical techniques, and computer algorithms that
behavior of a solid material that is subjected to mechanical or thermal loading. The eld has a wide range o


1. Geomechanics modeling the shape of planets; tectonics; and earthquake
prediction;
2. Civil engineering designing foundations or structures;
3. Mechanical engineering designing load bearing components for vehicles; power
generation and transmission;
4. Manufacturing engineering designing metal and polymer forming processes;
machining, etc;
5. Biomechanics designing implants; bone mechanics; as well as modeling stress
driven phenomena controlling celular and molecular processes;
6. Materials Science designing composites; alloy microstructures, thin lms, and
developing materials processing;
7. Microelectronics designing failure resistant packaging and interconnects;
8. Nanotechnology stress driven self-assembly on surfaces; manufacturing
processes such as nano-imprinting; modeling atomic-force microscope/sample interactions.

This chapter describes how solid mechanics can be used to solve practical problems. The remainder of
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detailed description of the physical laws that govern deformation and failure in solids, as well as the mathe
methods that are used to solve problems involving deformable solids. Specically,

Chapter 2 covers the mathematical description of shape changes and internal forces in solids;
Chapter 3 discusses constitutive laws that are used to relate shape changes to internal forces;
Chapter 4 contains analytical solutions to a series of simple problems involving deformable solids;
Chapter 5 provides a short summary of analytical techniques and solutions for linear elastic solids;
Chapter 6 describes analytical techniques and solutions for plastically deforming solids;
Chapter 7 gives an introduction to nite element analysis, focusing on using commercial software;
Chapter 8 has a more complete discussion of the implementation of the nite element method;
Chapter 9 describes how to use solid mechanics to model material failure;
Chapter 10 discusses solids with special geometries (rods, beams, membranes, plates and shells).

Solid mechanics is incomprehensible without some background in vectors, tensors and index notation.
briey in the appendices.



1.1 Dening a Problem in Solid Mechanics

Regardless of the application, the general steps in setting up a problem in solid mechanics are
always the same:
1. Decide upon the goal of the problem and desired information;
2. Identify the geometry of the solid to be modeled;
3. Determine the loading applied to the solid;
4. Decide what physics must be included in the model;
5. Choose (and calibrate) a constitutive law that describes the behavior of the material;
6. Choose a method of analysis;
7. Solve the problem.
Each step in the process is discussed in more detail below.



1.1.1 Deciding what to calculate

This seems a rather silly question but at some point of their careers, most engineers have been
told by their manager `Why dont you just set up a nite element model of our (crank-case;
airframe; material., etc, etc) so we can stop it from (corroding; fatiguing; fracturing, etc). If you
nd yourself in this situation, you are doomed. Models can certainly be helpful in preventing
failure, but unless you have a very clear idea of why the failure is occurring, you wont know
what to model.

Here is a list of of some of the things that can typically be calculated very accurately using solid
mechanics:
1. The deformed shape of a structure or component subjected to mechanical, thermal or
electrical loading;
2. The forces required to cause a particular shape change;
3. The stiffness of a structure or component;
4. The internal forces (stresses) in a structure or component;
5. The critical forces that lead to failure by structural instability (buckling);
6. Natural frequencies of vibration for a structure or component.

In addition, solid mechanics can be used to model a variety of failure mechanisms. Failure predictions
are more difcult, however, because the physics of failure can only be modeled using approximate
constitutive equations. These must be calibrated experimentally, and do not always perfectly
characterize the failure mechanism. Nevertheless, there are well established procedures for each of
the following:

1. Predict the critical loads to cause fracture in a brittle or ductile solid containing a crack;
2. Predict the fatigue life of a component under cyclic loading;
3. Predict the rate of growth of a stress-corrosion crack in a component;
4. Predict the creep life of a component;
5. Find the length of a crack that a component can contain and still withstand fatigue or fracture;
6. Predict the wear rate of a surface under contact loading;
7. Predict the fretting or contact fatigue life of a surface.

Solid mechanics is increasingly being used for applications other than structural and mechanical engineerin

research areas, and some are better developed than others. Applications include

1. Calculating the properties (e.g. elastic modulus, yield stress, stress-strain
curve; fracture toughness, etc) of a composite material in terms of those of
its constituents.
2. Predicting the inuence of the microstructure (e.g. texture; grain structure;
dispersoids; etc) on the mechanical properties of metals such as modulus,
yield stress, strain hardening, etc.
3. Modeling the physics of failure in materials, including fracture, fatigue,
plasticity, and wear, and using the models to design failure resistant
materials
4. Modeling materials processing examples include casting and
solidication; alloy heat treatments; thin lm and surface coating deposition (e.g. by sputte
electroplating);
5. Modeling biological phenomena and processes, such as bone growth; cell mobility; cell wal
bacterial mobility.



1.1.2 Dening the geometry of the solid

Again, this seems rather obvious surely the shape of the solid is always known? True
usually not obvious how much of the component to model, and at what level of detail. For
example, in a crash simulation, must the entire vehicle be modelled, or just the front part? Should
the engine block be included? The passengers?

At the other extreme, it is often not obvious how much geometrical detail needs to be included in
a computation. If you model a component, do you need to include every geometrical feature
(such as bolt holes, cutouts, chamfers, etc)? The following guidelines might be helpful

1. For modeling brittle fracture, fatigue failure, or for calculating critical loads required to
initiate plastic ow in a component, it is very important to model the geometry in great
detail, because geometrical features can lead to stress concentrations that initiate damage.
2. For modeling creep damage, large scale plastic deformation (eg metal forming), or
vibration analysis, geometrical details are less important. Geometrical features with dimen
macroscopic cross section can generally be neglected.
3. Geometrical features often only inuence local stresses they do not have much inuence



principle, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, suggests that a geometrical
dimension L (e.g. the diameter of a hole in the solid) will inuence stresses over a region w
surrounding the feature. This means that if you are interested in the stress state at a particular po
need not worry about geometrical features that are far from the region of interest. Saint-Vena
applies to elastic solids, although it can usually also be applied to plastic solids that strain harden.

As a general rule, it is best to start with the simplest possible model, and see what it predicts. If the sim
question, youre done. If not, the results can serve as a guide in rening the calculation



1.1.3 Dening loading

There are ve ways that mechanical loads can be induced in a solid:
1. The boundaries can be subjected to a prescribed displacement or motion;
2. The boundaries can be subjected to a distribution of pressure normal to the surface, or frictio
surface;
3. A boundary may be subjected to a combination of displacement and traction (mixed) boundary
you could prescribe horizontal displacements, together with the vertical traction, at some point on t
4. The interior of the solid can be subjected to gravitational or electromagnetic body forces;
5. The solid can contact another solid, or in some cases can contact itself.
6. Stresses can be induced by nonuniform thermal expansion in the solid, or some other mater
transformation that causes the solid to change its shape.

When specifying boundary conditions, you must follow these rules:
1. In a 3D analysis, you must specify three components of either displacement
(but not both) at each point on the boundary. You can mix these
could prescribe or , but exactly three components must always b
prescribed. This includes free surfaces, where the tractions are prescribed to be zero.
2. Similarly, in a 2D analysis you must prescribe two components of displacement or traction at eac
point on the boundary.
3. If you are solving a static problem with only tractions prescribed on the boundary, you must en
force acting on the solid sums to zero (otherwise a static equilibrium solution cannot exist).

In practice, it can be surprisingly difcult to nd out exactly what the loading on your system looks like
loading on a building can be modeled as a prescribed acceleration of the buildings base


















Pressure loading usually arises from wind or uid forces, but you might need to do some sophisticated c
these forces. In the case of contact loading, youll need to be able to estimate friction coefcients. Fo
applications, you may also need to model attractive forces between the two contacting surfaces.

This is where standards are helpful. For example, building codes regulate civil engineernig structure
requirements for vehicles, and so on.

You can also avoid the need to nd exactly what loading a structure will experience in service by simply c
that will lead to failure, or the fatigue life as a function of loading. In this case some other unfortunate en
whether or not the failure loads are acceptable.



1.1.4 Deciding what physics to include in the model

There are three decisions to be made here:

1. Do you need to calculate additional eld quantities, such as temperature, electric or magnetic el
through the solid? Temperature is the most common additional eld quantity. Here are some rough gu
to decide whether to account for heating effects.

As a rough guide, the stress induced by temperature variation in a component is
Youngs modulus of the material; is its thermal expansion coefcient, and
denote the maximum and minimum values of the product
temperature variations if is a signicant fraction of the stress induced by mechanical loading.

To decide whether you need to do a transient heat conduction analysis, note that the
temperature rise at a distance r from a point source of heat of intensity in an innite solid
is , where erfc() denotes the complementary error
function, is the materials thermal conductivity, and is its thermal
diffusivity, with the mass density and the specic heat capacity. This suggests that a
solid with dimension L will reach its steady state temperature in time
time-scale of interest in your problem is signicantly larger than this, and heat ux is
contstant, you can use the steady-state temperature distribution. If not, you must account for
transients.

Finally to decide whether you need to account for heat generated by plastic ow
the rate of heat generation per unit volume is of order where is the material
yield stress, and is the plastic strain rate. The temperature rise due to rapid (adiabatic) plasti
, where is the strain increment applied to the material.

































A coupled uid-solid analysis from
2. Do you need to do a dynamic analysis, or a static analysis? Here are some rough guidelines
that will help you to decide:
The speed of a shear wave propagating through an elastic solid is
mass density of the solid, is its shear modulus and its Poissons ratio. The time taken for a
wave to propagate across a component with size L is of order . In many cases, stresses
decay to their static values after about 10L/c. If the loading applied to the component does not
change signicantly during this time period a quasi-static computation (possibly including
accelerations as body forces) should sufce.
The stress induced by acceleration (e.g. in a rotating component) is of order
approximate size of the component, is its mass density, and a is the magnitude of the
acceleration. If this stress is negligible compared with other forces applied to the solid, it can be
neglected. If not, it should be included (as a body force if wave propagation can be neglected).

3. Are you solving a coupled uid/solid
interaction problem? These arise in
aeroelasticity (design of exible
aircraft wings or helicopter rotor
blades; or very long bridges);
offshore structures; pipelines; or uid
containers. In these applications the
uid ow has a high Reynolds
number (so uid forces are
dominated by inertial effects).
Coupled problems are also very
common in biomedical applications
such as blood ow or cellular
mechanics. In these applications the
Reynolds number for the uid ow is
much lower, and uid forces are dominated by viscous effects. Different analysis techniques ar
applications. Such problems are beyond the scope of this book.



1.1.5 Dening material behavior

Choosing the right equations to describe material behavior is the most critical part of setting up a solid me
the wrong model, or inaccurate material properties, will always completely invalidate your predictions
choices, with suggested applications:

1. Isotropic linear elasticity (familiar in one dimension as ) good for polycrystalline met
polymers udergoing small deformations and subjected to low loads (less than the material yield s
constants are required to characterize the material, and material data is highly accurate and readily avai






FEA model of a die-forming process, from
the DIPRO website. A sophisticated
plasticity model would be required to
accurately predict the wall-thickness of the
part and its elastic springback.

2. Anisotropic linear elasticity (similar to isotropic linear elasticity, but models materials which are
stiffer in some directions than others). Good for reinforced composites; wood; single crystals of
metals and ceramics. Between 3 and 21 material properties must be determined. Material data is
highly accurate and readily available.Isotropic or anisotropic linear elasticity is good for the vast
majority of engineering design calculations, where components cannot safely exceed yield. It can
be used for deection calculations, fatigue analysis, and vibration analysis.

3. `Hyperelasticity used to model rubber and foams, which can sustain huge, reversible, shape
changes. There are several models to choose from. The simplest model (the incompressible
Neo-Hookean solid, which, in uniaxial stress, has a true stress true strain relation given by
) has only a single material constant. More complex models have
several parameters, and it may be difcult to nd values for your material in the published
literature. Experimental calibration will almost certainly be required.

4. Viscoelasticity. Used to model materials
which exhibit a gradual increase in strain
when loaded at constant stress (with stress
rate-v-strain rate ) or
which show hysteresis during cyclic
loading (with stress-v-strain rate of form
). Usually used to model
polymeric materials and polymer based
composites, and biological tissue. Can
also model slow creep in amorphous
solids such as glass. Constitutive
equations contain at least 3 parameters,
and usually many more. Material behavior
varies widely between materials and is
highly temperature dependent.
Experimental calibration will almost
certainly be required to obtain accurate predictions.


5. Rate independent metal plasticity. Used to model permanent deformation in metals loaded above
range of models are available. The simplest is a rigid perfectly plastic solid
yield stress , and then deforms at constant stress. An elastic-perfectly plastic
equations when loaded below the yield stress, but deforms at constant stress if yield is exceeded.
appropriate to predict energy dissipation in a crash analysis, or to calculate tool forces in a metal cutti
Data for material yield stress are readily available, but are sensitive to material processing and micro
used with caution. More sophisticated models describe strain hardening in some way (the change in
with plastic deformation). These are used in modeling ductile fracture, low cycle fatigue (where










plastically deformed), and when predicting residual stresses and springback in metal forming ope
sophisticated plasticity models attempt to track the development of microstructure or damage in the
Gurson plasticity model (developed at Brown University by then-graduate student A.L Gurson) m
growth of voids in a metal, and is widely used to simulate ductile fracture. Such models typicall
parameters, and can differ widely in their predictions. They must be very carefully chosen and calibrat

6. Viscoplasticity: similar in structure to metal plasticity, but accounts for the tendency of the ow
stress of a metal to increase when deformed at high strain rates. These would be used in modeling
high-speed machining, for example, or in applications involving explosive shock loading.
Viscoplastic constitutive equations are also used to model creep the steady accumulation of plastic
strain in a metal when loaded below its yield stress, and subjected to high temperatures. The simplest
viscoplastic constitutive law has a uniaxial strain rate versus stress response of the form
and so has only two parameters. More complex models account for elastic deformation
and strain hardening. Data for the simple models is quite easy to nd, but more sophisticated and
accurate models would have to be calibrated experimentally.

7. Crystal plasticity: Used to model anisotropic plastic ow in a single crystal of a metal. Mostly used
in materials science calculations and in modeling some metal forming processes. These models are
still under development, material data is not easy to nd, and very laborious and expensive to
measure.

8. Strain Gradient Plasticity: A formulation developed in the last 5-10 years to model the behavior
very small volumes of a metal (i.e. less than 100 ). Typically, small volumes of metal are
stronger than bulk samples. These models are still under development, are difcult to calibrate, and
dont always work very well.

9. Discrete Dislocation Plasticity: A technique to model plastic ow in very small volumes of material
by tracking the nucleation, motion and annihiliation of individual dislocations in the solid. DDP
models contain a large number of material parameters that are very hard to calibrate. Currently a
research tool.

10. Critical state plasticity (cam-clay). Used to model soils, whose behavior depends on moisture
content. Somewhat similar in structure to metal plasticity, except that the yield strength of a soil
is highly pressure dependent (it increases with compressive pressure). Simple models contain
only 3 or 4 material parameters that can be calibrated quite accurately.

11. Pressure-dependent viscoplasticity. Similar to critical state plasticity, in that these models
account for changes in ow stress of a material with conning pressure. Used to model granular
materials, and some polymers and composite materials (typically in modeling processes such as
extrusion or drawing).

12. Concrete models. Intended to model the crushing (in compression) or fracture (in tension) of






Quasicontinuum
simulation of a crack
approaching a
bi-material interface.
Quasicontinuum
concrete (obviously!). The mathematical structure resembles that of pressure dependent
plasticity.

13. Atomistic models. Replace traditional stress-strain laws with a
direct calculation of stress-strain behavior using embedded
atomic scale simulations. The atomic scale computations use
empirical potentials to model atom interactions, or may
approximate the Schrodinger wave equation directly. Techiques
include the `Quasi-Continuum method, and the Coupled-
Atomistic-Discrete Dislocation Method. Their advantage is that
they capture the physics of material behavior extremely
accurately; their disadvantage is that they currently can only
model extremely small material volumes (20-100nm or so).
Atomistic models based on empirical potentials contain a large
number of adjustable parameters these are usually calibrated
against known quantities such as elastic moduli and stacking
fault energies, and can also be computed using ab-initio
techniques. The accuracy of the the predictions depends strongly
on the accuracy of the potentials. Mostly a research tool for
nanotechnology and materials design applications.

This is by no means an exhaustive list additional models are
available for materials such as shape memory alloys, and
piezoelectric materials, for example.

These material models are intended primarily to approximate stress-strain behavior. Special constitutive
developed to model the behavior of contacting surfaces or interfaces between two solids (Coulomb frictio
addition, if you need to model damage (fracture or fatigue), you may need to select and calibrate additi
example, to model brittle fracture, you would need to know the fracture toughness of the material. To mo
crack, you would probably use Paris grack growth law and would need data for
exponent n. There are several other stress- or strain-based fatigue laws in common use. These mod
experimental data, and are not based on any detailed physical understanding of the failure mechanism. T
with caution, and material properties must be measured carefully.



1.1.6 A representative initial value problem in solid mechanics

The result of the decisions made in Sections 1.1.1-1.1.5 is a Boundary value problem
(for dynamic problems). This consists of a set of partial differential equations, together with initial and
must be solved for the displacement and stress elds, as well as any auxiliary elds (such as temperature)
the structure of these equations, in this section we list the governing equations for a representative initial va





As a representative example, we state the initial value problem that governs
elastic wave propagation in a linear elastic solid.

Given:
1. The shape of the solid in its unloaded condition
2. The Youngs modulus E and Poissons ratio for the solid
3. The thermal expansion coefcient for the solid, and temperature
distribution in the solid (for simplicity we assume that the
temperature does not vary with time)
4. The initial displacement eld in the solid , and the initial velocity eld
5. A body force distribution (force per unit volume) acting on the solid
6. Boundary conditions, specifying displacements on a portion
boundary of R

Calculate displacements , strains and stresses satisfying the governing equations of linear elastod
1. The strain-displacement (compatibility) equation
2. The linear elastic stress-strain law
The equation of motion for a continuum (F=ma) 3.
4. The elds must satisfy initial conditions
5. As well as boundary conditions



1.1.7 Choosing a method of analysis

Once you have set up the problem, you will need to solve the equations of motion (or equilibrium) for a co
equations governing material behavior, to determine the stress and strain distributions in the solid. Severa
this purpose.

Exact solutions: There is a good chance that you can nd an exact solution for:
1. 2D (plane stress or plane strain) linear elastic solids, particularly under static loading. So














































































transforms, stress function methods, and complex variable methods.
Dynamic solutions are also possible, but somewhat more difcult.
2. 2D viscoelastic solids.
3. 3D linear elasticitity problems can be solved, usually using integral
transforms, if they are simple enough.
4. 2D (plane strain) deformation of rigid plastic solids (using slip line elds)

Naturally, analytical solutions are most easily found for solids with a simple
geometry (e.g. an innite solid containing a crack; loading applied to a at surface,
etc). In addition, special analytical techniques can be used for problems where the
solids geometry can be approximated in some way. Examples include membrane
theory; shell and plate theory; beam theory; and truss analysis.

Even when you cant nd an exact solution to the stress and strain elds in your solid, you can sometim
need using powerful mathematical theorems. For example, bounding theorems allow you to estimate the
structure quickly and easily.

Numerical Solutions: These are used for most engineering design calculations in practice. These include
1. The nite element method which will be discussed in detail in this book. This is the most wide
be used to solve almost any problem in solid mechanics, provided you understand how to mod
access to a fast enough computer.
2. Finite difference methods somewhat similar to FEM but much less widely used.
3. The boundary integral equation method (or boundary element method) is a more efcient com
elastic problems, but is less well suited to nonlinear materials or geometry.
4. Free volume methods: Used more in computational uid dynamics than in solids, but good for pro
deformations, where the solid ows much like a uid.
5. Atomistic methods: used in nanotechnology applications to model material behavior at the atomic
techniques integrate the equations of motion (Newtons laws) for individual atoms; Molecular
equations to calculate atom positions. The forces between atoms are computed using empirical
sometimes using approximations to quantum mechanics. These computations can only consider
volumes (up to a few million atoms) and short time-scales (up to a nanosecond).