Stress and Strain

Abstract

In the first three chapters, we have given a fairly simple description of a solid from the atomic point of view, where we explicitly brought out the connection between the individual atoms, their interactions, and the resulting properties of the solid as a whole. In this chapter, we begin a discussion of the formal theory for the continuum solid; we have already introduced the important concepts of stress and strain, and the elastic moduli that connect them. Here we describe these concepts, and the mathematical theory used to handle them, in more detail.