Virtual work

Abstract: A unified treatment is presented of thermoelasticity by application and further developments of the methods of irreversible thermodynamics. The concept of generalized free energy introduced in a previous publication plays the role of a ``thermoelastic potential'' and is used along with a new definition of the dissipation function in terms of the time derivative of an entropy displacement. The general laws of thermoelasticity are formulated in a variational form along with a minimum entropy production principle. This leads to equations of the Lagrangian type, and the concept of thermal force is introduced by means of a virtual work definition. Heat conduction problems can then be formulated by the methods of matrix algebra and mechanics. This also leads to the very general property that the entropy density obeys a diffusion‐type law. General solutions of the equations of thermoelasticity are also given using the Papkovitch‐Boussinesq potentials. Examples are presented and it is shown how the generalized coordinate method may be used to calculate the thermoelastic internal damping of elastic bodies.

Abstract: The recognition that minimizing an integral function through variational methods (as in the last chapters) leads to the second-order differential equations of Euler-Lagrange for the minimizing function made it natural for mathematicians of the eighteenth century to ask for an integral quantity whose minimization would result in Newton’s equations of motion. With such a quantity, a new principle through which the universe acts would be obtained. The belief that “something” should be minimized was in fact a long-standing conviction of natural philosophers who felt that God had constructed the universe to operate in the most efficient manner—but how that efficiency was to be assessed was subject to interpretation. However, Fermat (1657) had already invoked such a principle successfully in declaring that light travels through a medium along the path of least time of transit. Indeed, it was by recognizing that the brachistochrone should give the least time of transit for light in an appropriate medium that Johann Bernoulli “proved” that it should be a cycloid in 1697. (See Problem 1.1.) And it was Johann Bernoulli who in 1717 suggested that static equilibrium might be characterized through requiring that the work done by the external forces during a small displacement from equilibrium should vanish. This “principle of virtual work” marked a departure from other minimizing principles in that it incorporated stationarity—even local stationarity—(tacitly) in its formulation. Efforts were made by Leibniz, by Euler, and most notably, by Lagrange to define a principle of least action (kinetic energy), but it was not until the last century that a truly satisfactory principle emerged, namely, Hamilton’s principle of stationary action (c. 1835) which was foreshadowed by Poisson (1809) and polished by Jacobi (1848) and his successors into an enduring landmark of human intellect, one, moreover, which has survived transition to both relativity and quantum mechanics. (See [L], [Fu] and Problems 8.11 8.12.)

Abstract: The paper formulates a one-dimensional large-strain beam theory for plane deformations of plane beams, with rigorous consistency of dynamics and kinematics via application of the principle of virtual work. This formulation is complemented by considerations on how to obtain constitutive equations, and applied to the problem of buckling of circular rings, including the effects of axial normal strain and transverse shearing strain.

Abstract: Part A Description of Three-Dimensional Elasticity 1 Geometrical and other preliminaries 2 The equations of equilibrium and the principle of virtual work 3 Elastic materials and their constitutive equations 4 Hyperelasticity 5 The boundary value problems of three-dimensional elasticity Part B Mathematical Methods in Three-Dimensional Elasticity 6 Existence theory based on the implicit function theorem 7 Existence theory based on the minimization of the Energy Bibliography Index