Elasticity (Q5894733)

This is primarily an undergraduate textbook, which offers a general presentation of the field of elasticity theory mainly from the viewpoint of a practical engineer, with most of the examples drawn from contact mechanics and thermoelasticity. The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains the usual preliminaries regarding stress, strain, displacements, equilibrium equations, constitutive relations, and compatibility conditions. In the second part, the discussion revolves round plane problems and encompasses the states of plane strain and plane stress, the stress function method, series and transform solutions in Cartesian coordinates, polar coordinate problems, Fourier series expansions, Michell solutions, and applications to beams and wedges. Contact problems, dislocations and cracks are also discussed. The last chapter here looks at plane thermoelasticity. The third part is devoted to three-dimensional topics such as solutions of the displacement equilibrium equations (Galerkin, Papkovich-Neuber, Boussinesq) for both elasticity and thermoelasticity, singular solutions, axially symmetric problems, frictionless contact, and cracks. The book does not contain any discussion of the complex variable treatment of plane elasticity, nor of the boundary integral equation method. The text is clearly written and the techniques are introduced constructively. This should be helpful to students and other readers, from whom only a rudimentary knowledge of continuum mechanics and higher mathematics is required. Since exercises in elasticity theory often have lengthy and rather involved solutions, a solution manual would make a very useful companion to this book.