The linear theory of elasticity in anisotropic materials is essentially based on the fourth order stiffness tensor C. Such a tensor is represented in MTEX by a variable of type stiffnessTensor. Such a variable can either by set up using a symmetric 6x6 matrix or by importing it from an external file. The following examples does so for the stiffness tensor for Olivine
Hooke's Law
The stiffness tensor tensor of a material is defined as the stress the material experiences for a given strain
Now Hooke's law states that the resulting stress can be computed by
The other way the compliance tensor S = inv(C) translates stress into strain
The elastic energy of the strain eps can be computed equivalently by the following equations
Young's Modulus
Young's modulus is also known as the tensile modulus and measures the stiffness of elastic materials. It is computed for a specific direction d by the command YoungsModulus.
If the direction d is omitted Young's modulus is returned as a spherical function.
Linear Compressibility
The linear compressibility is the deformation of an arbitrarily shaped specimen caused by an increase in hydrostatic pressure and can be described by a second rank tensor. Similar to the Young's modulus it can be computed by the command linearCompressibility for specific directions d or as a spherical function
Poisson Ratio
The rate of compression / decompression in a direction n normal to the pulling direction p is called Poisson ratio.
If we omit in the call to PoissonRatio the last argument
we again obtain a spherical function. However, this time it is only meaningful to evaluate this function at directions perpendicular to the pulling direction p. Hence, a good way to visualize this function is to plot it as a section in the x/y plane
Shear Modulus
The shear modulus is TODO
Wave Velocities
Since elastic compression and decompression is mechanics of waves traveling through a medium anisotropic compressibility causes also anisotropic waves speeds. The analysis of this anisotropy is explained in the section wave velocities.