Lecture Note1

Course Introduction
AE51003/AE61009: Applied Elasticity and Plasticity

Prasun Jana
Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering
IIT Kharagpur

1 Introduction
Any material body deforms when it is subjected to external forces. The deformation is
called elastic if it is reversible and time independent, that is, if the deformation vanishes
instantaneously as soon as forces are removed. A reversible but time-dependent deformation
is known as viscoelastic; in this case the deformation increases with time after application
of load, and it decreases slowly after the load is removed. The deformation is called plastic
if it is irreversible or permanent.
A brittle material such as glass, concrete, or rock under low hydrostatic pressure can
only have elastic deformation before it fails under ultimate load. On the other hand, metals
and alloys under high confining pressure can undergo substantial plastic deformation before
failure and therefore are known as ductile materials.

2 Elasticity
The subject of Elasticity is concerned with the determination of the stresses and displace-
ments in a body as a result of applied mechanical or thermal loads, for those cases in which
the body reverts to its original state on the removal of the loads.
1
This lecture note should be used for reading purposes only. Many texts of this note may not be original;
are taken directly from some reference materials.

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 In the discussion of elasticity, we shall further restrict attention to the case of linear
infinitesimal elasticity, in which the stresses and displacements are linearly proportional to
the applied loads and the displacements are small in comparison with the characteristic
length dimensions of the body. These restrictions ensure that linear superposition can be
used and enable us to employ a wide range of series and transform techniques which are not
available for non-linear problems.
Most engineers first encounter problems of this kind in the context of the subject known
as Mechanics of Materials, which is an important constituent of most undergraduate engi-
neering curricula. Mechanics of Materials differs from Elasticity in that various plausible but
unsubstantiated assumptions are made about the deformation process in the course of the
analysis. A typical example is the assumption that plane sections remain plane in the bend-
ing of a slender beam. Elasticity makes no such assumptions, but attempts to develop the
solution directly and rigorously from its first principles, which are Newton’s laws of motion,
Euclidian geometry and Hooke’s law. Approximations are often introduced towards the end
of the solution, but these are mathematical approximations used to obtain solutions of the
governing equations rather than physical approximations that impose artificial and strictly
unjustifiable constraints on the permissible deformation field.
However, it would be a mistake to draw too firm a distinction between the two approaches,
since practitioners of each have much to learn from the other. Mechanics of Materials, with
its emphasis on physical reasoning and a full exploration of the practical consequences of the
results, is often able to provide insights into the problem that are less easily obtained from
a purely mathematical perspective. Indeed, we shall make extensive use of physical parallels
in this book and pursue many problems to conclusions relevant to practical applications,
with the hope of deepening the reader’s understanding of the underlying structure of the
subject. Conversely, the mathematical rigour of Elasticity gives us greater confidence in
the results, since, even when we have to resort to an approximate solution, we can usually
estimate its accuracy with some confidence-something that is very difficult to do with the
physical approximations used in Mechanics of Materials. Also, there is little to be said for
using an em ad hoc approach when, as is often the case, a more rigorous treatment presents
no serious difficulty.

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3 Plasticity
The theory of plasticity is the branch of mechanics that deals with the calculation of stresses
and strains in a body, made of ductile material, permanently deformed by a set of applied
forces. The theory is based on certain experimental observations on the macroscopic behavior
of metals in uniform states of combined stresses. The observed results are then idealized into
a mathematical formulation to describe the behavior of metals under complex stresses.
Unlike elastic solids, in which the state of strain depends only on the final state of
stress, the deformation that occurs in a plastic solid is determined by the complete history
of the loading. The plasticity problem is, therefore, essentially incremental in nature, the
final distortion of the solid being obtained as the sum total of the incremental distortions
following the strain path.
A metal may be regarded as macroscopically homogeneous and isotropic when the small
crystal grains forming the aggregate are distributed with random orientations. As a re-
sult of plastic deformation, the crystallographic directions gradually rotate toward a com-
mon axis, producing a preferred orientation. An initially isotropic material thereby be-
comes anisotropic, and its mechanical properties vary with direction. The development of
anisotropy with progressive cold work and the resulting strain-hardening are too complex
to be successfully incorporated in the theoretical framework. In the mathematical theory of
plasticity, it is generally assumed that the material remains isotropic throughout the defor-
mation irrespective of the degree of coldwork. Since the strain-hardening characteristic of a
metal in a complex state of stress can be related to that in uniaxial tension or compression, it
is necessary to examine the uniaxial stress-strain behavior in some detail before considering
the general theory of plasticity.
In ductile metals, under favorable conditions, plastic deformation can continue to a very
large extent without failure by fracture. Large plastic strains do occur in many metal-working
processes, which constitute an important area of application of the theory of plasticity.
While elastic strains may be neglected in such problems, the continued change in geometry
of the workpiece must be allowed for in the theoretical treatment. Severe plastic strains are
produced locally in certain mechanical tests such as the hardness test and the notch tensile
test. The significance of these tests cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of
the extent of the plastic zone and the associated state of stress. Situations in which elastic
and plastic strains are comparable in magnitude arise in a number of important structural
problems when the loading is continued beyond the elastic limit. Structural designs based

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on the estimation of collapse loads are more economical than elastic designs, since the plastic
method takes full advantage of the available ductility of the material.

The aim of this course is to give an introductory concept of both elasticity and plasticity
that is applicable to the design structural components.