Solid Mechanics: An Introduction (Solid Mechanics and Its Applications, 15)

This book is intended as an introductory text on Solid Mechanics suitable for engineers, scientists and applied mathematicians. Solid mechanics is treated as a subset of mathematical engineering and courses on this topic which include theoretical, numerical and experimental aspects (as this text does) can be amongst the most interesting and accessible that an undergraduate science student can take. I have concentrated entirely on linear elasticity being, to the beginner, the most amenable and accessible aspect of solid mechanics. It is a subject with a long history, though its development in relatively recent times can be traced back to Hooke (circa 1670). Partly because of its long history solid mechanics has an 'old fashioned' feel to it which is reflected in numerous texts written on the subject. This is particularly so in the classic text by Love (A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity 4th ed., Cambridge, Univ. Press, 1927). Although there is a wealth of information in that text it is not in a form which is easily accessible to the average lecturer let alone the average engineering student. This classic style avoiding the use of vectors or tensors has been mirrored in many other more 'modern' texts.

This book is a concise and readable introductory text on solid mechanics suitable for engineers, scientists and applied mathematicians. It presents the foundations of stress, strain and elasticity theory and consistently employs the use of vectors and (particularly) Cartesian tensor notation.
The first chapter introduces vectors with particular emphasis being paid to applications which arise in later chapters. Chapter 2 introduces Cartesian tensors and describes some of their important applications. In particular, finite and infinitessimal rotations are examined as are isotropic tensors and second order symmetric tensors. The last topic of this chapter includes a full discussion on eigenvalues and eigenvectors. There are separate introductions, in Chapters 3 and 4, to stress and strain and to their practical measurement using, respectively, photoelastic methods and strain gauges. In Chapter 5 the concepts of stress and strain are brought together and, in conjunction with Newton's equilibrium equations, used to deduce the basic equations of linear elasticity theory.
These fundamental equations are then examined and analyzed by obtaining simple exact solutions, including solutions which describe twisting, bending and stretching of beams.
Chapter 6 introduces the fundamental concept of strain enegergy and uses this concept to derive the Kirchoff uniqueness theorem, Rayleigh's reciprocal theorem and the important Castigliano relations. The chapter concludes with a thorough treatment of the theorem of minimum potential energy and examines some of its applications. The final three chapters examine the application of the fundamental equations to the theory of torsion, to structural analysis and to the treatment of two dimensional elastostatics by analytical and approximate (finite element) methods.

Front Matter....Pages i-x Vectors....Pages 1-45 Cartesian Tensors....Pages 46-72 The Analysis of Stress....Pages 73-96 The Analysis of Strain....Pages 97-116 Linear Elasticity....Pages 117-140 Energy....Pages 141-161 The General Torsion Problem....Pages 162-191 The Matrix Analysis of Structures....Pages 192-231 Two Dimensional Elastostatics....Pages 232-259 Back Matter....Pages 260-284