Elastic: 38-1 Hooke’s law The subject of elasticity deals with the behavior of those substances which have the property of recovering their size and shape when the forces producing deformations are removed. We find this elastic property to some extent in all solid bodies. If we had the time to deal with the subject at length, we would want to look into many things: the behavior of materials, the general laws of elasticity, the general theory of elasticity, the atomic machinery that determine the elastic properties, and finally the limitations of elastic [aws when the forces become so ‘great that plastic flow and fracture occur. It would take more me than we have to cover all these subjects m detail, s0 we will have to leave out some things For example, we will not discuss plasticity or the limitations of the elastic laws. (We touched on these subjects briefly when we were talking about dislocations in metals.) Also, we will not be able to discuss the internal mechanisms of elasticity: so our treatment will not have the completeness we have tried to achieve an the earlier chapters. Our aim is mainly to give you an acquaintance with some of the ‘ways of dealing with such practical problems as the bending of beams. ‘When you push on a piece of material, it “‘grves"—the material is deformed, I the force is small enough, the relative displacements of the various points in the ‘material are proportional to the force—we say the behavior 1s elastic. We will discuss only the elastic behavior. First, we will write down the fundamental laws. of elasticity, and then we will apply them to a number of different situations Suppose we take a rectangular block of material of length /, width w, and height 4, as shown in Fig. 38-1. If we pull on the ends with a force F, then the length increases by an amount Al. We will suppose in all cases that the change in length 1s a small fraction of the orginal length. As a matter of fa like wood and steel, the material will break if the change in length 1s more than few percent of the original length. For a large number of materials, experiments show that for suffictently small extensions the force is proportional to the extenston for matersals Fal. 8.1) This relation 1s known as Hooke's law. The lengthening 4/ of the bar will also depend on its length. We can figure out how by the following argument. If we cement two identical blocks together, end toeend, the same forces act on each block each will stretch by Al. Thus, the stretch of a block of length 2/ would be twice as big as a block of the same cross section, but of length. In order to get a number more characteristic of the material, and less of any particular shape, we choose to deal with the ratio AI/ of the extension to the original length. This ratio is proportional to the force but independent of / al rad (38.2) The force F will also depend on the area of the block, Suppose that we put two blocks side by side. Then for a given stretch A/ we would have the force F ‘on each block, or twice as much on the combination of the two blocks. The force, for a given amount of stretch, must be proportional to the cross-sectional area 4 of the block. To obtain a law in which the coefficient of proportionality 1s inde- pendent of the dimensions of the body, we write Hooke’s law for a rectangular a) 3841 Hooke's law 38-2. Uniform strains 38-3 The torsion bar; shear waves 38-4 The bent beam 38-5 Buckling Reviews Chapter 47, Vol. 1, Sound; the Wave Equation. Fig. 38-1. The stretching of © bor under uniform tensionA444 P Fig. 98-2. A bar under uniform hydrostatic pressure, AAAS 2 Fig 38-3. Hydrostatic pressure is the superposition of three longitudinal compressions block in the form al revs 83) The constant ¥ isa property only of the nature of the material; it is known 35 Young's modulus. (Usually you will see Young’s modulus called £. But we've used £ for electric fields, energy, and em("s, so we prefer to use a different letter) ‘The force per unt area is called the siress, and the stretch per unit length—the fractional stretch—is called the strain, Equation (38.3) can therefore be rewritten in the following way F a yx al T? G84) Stress = (Young's modulus) x (Strain). ‘There is another part to Hooke’s law: When you siretch a block of material 1m one direction it contracts at right angles to the stretch. The contraction in width is proportional to the width w and also to Ai/l. The sideways contraction is 1m the same proportion for both width and height, and 1s u aw _ ah wh , G85) ‘where the constant a is another property of the material called Poisson's rauo. Itis always positive in sign and 1s a number less than 1/2. (Its “reasonable” that should be generally posiuve, but itis not quite elear that st must beso.) The two constants ¥ and o specify completely the elastic properties of a ho ‘mogeneous’isotropre (that 1s, nonerystalline) material. In crystalline materials the stretches and contractions can be different in diferent directions, so there can be ‘many more elastic constants. We will restrict our discussion temporaeily to homo- geneous’ isotropic materials whose properties can be described by Y andg. Asusual there are different ways of describing things—some people like 10 describe the clastic properties of materials by different constants. It always takes two, and they can be related too and ¥. ‘The last general Jaw we need is the principle of superposition. Since the two Jaws (38 4) and (38.5) are linear in the forces and in the displacements, superposition will work. If you have one set of forces and get some displacements, and then you add a new set of forces and get some additional displacements, the resulting displacements wil be the sum of the ones you would get with the two sets of forces acting independently ‘Now we have all the general principles—the superposition principle and Eqs. 38.4) and (38.5)—and that’s all there is to elasticity. But that is like saying that once you have Newton's laws that's all theres to mechanies, Or, given Maxwell's equations, that’s all there is to electricity. It is, of course, true that with these principles you have a great deal, because with your present mathematical ably you could go a long way. We will, however, work out afew special applications. 38-2 Uniform strains As our first example let's find out what happens to a rectangular block under uniform hydrostatic pressure Let's put a block under water in a pressure tank, Then there will be a force acting inward on every face of the block proportional to the area (see Fig. 38-2). Since the hydrostatic pressure is uniform, the stress (force per unit area) on each face of the block is the same. We will work out frst the change 1n the length. ‘The change i length of the block can be thought of as the sum of changes in length that would occur in the three independent problems which are sketched in Fig, 38-3. 32Problem 1. 1f we push on the ends of the block with a pressure p, the com presional strain isp/ ¥, and itis negative, ah _P, TTY Problem 2. If we push on the two sides of the block with pressure p, the com- pressonal strain is again p/Y, but now we want the lengthwise strain, We can get that from the sideways strain multiplied by ~e.. The sideways strain is av op we 4h 4g 2 To toy Problem 3. Vf we push on the top of the block, the compressional strain is once mare p/Y, and the corresponding strain in the sideways direction is again —op/Y. We get dh 42 T tey Combining the results of the three problems—that is, taking Al = Aly + Ala + Alo—we get Alp T= 7 yl 20). 38.6) The problem is, of course, symmetrical in all three directions; it follows that aw _ ah Pp ai woh ye. (8.1) The change in the volume under hydrostatic pressure is also of some interest. Since V = Iwh, we can write, for small displacements, AV _ al, aw v Tt Using (38.6) and (38.7), we have av Pp Se = 3 £0 - 20) G88) People like to call AV/V the volume strain and write av pak The volume stress p is proportional to the volume strain—Hooke's law once more. The coeltcient K 1s called the bulk modulus; tt is related to the other constants by y K= 30 2a) 8.9) Since K is of some practical interest, many handbooks give Y and K instead of Y and. Ifyou wanta you can always get it from Eq. (38.9). We can also see from Eg, (38.9) that Poisson's ratio, 6, must be less than one-half. If wt were not, the bulk modulus would be negative, and the material would expand under increas ing pressure. That would allow us to get mechanical energy out of any old block it would mean that the block was in unstable equilibrium, If it started to expand it would continue by itself with a release of energy. Now we want to consider what happens when you put a “shear” strain on something. By shear strain we mean the kind of distortion shown in Fig. 38-4. Asa preliminary to this, let us look at the strains in a cube of material subjected to the forces shown in Fig. 38-5. Again we can break it up mto two problems: the vertical 383 Fig 38-4 Aube inuniform sheer. Fig. 38-5. A cube with compressing forces on top ond bottom ond equal stretching forces on two sides.