Stress (mechanics) - Principal Stresses and Stress Invariants

Principal Stresses and Stress Invariants

At every point in a stressed body there are at least three planes, called principal planes, with normal vectors, called principal directions, where the corresponding stress vector is perpendicular to the plane, i.e., parallel or in the same direction as the normal vector, and where there are no normal shear stresses . The three stresses normal to these principal planes are called principal stresses.

The components of the stress tensor depend on the orientation of the coordinate system at the point under consideration. However, the stress tensor itself is a physical quantity and as such, it is independent of the coordinate system chosen to represent it. There are certain invariants associated with every tensor which are also independent of the coordinate system. For example, a vector is a simple tensor of rank one. In three dimensions, it has three components. The value of these components will depend on the coordinate system chosen to represent the vector, but the length of the vector is a physical quantity (a scalar) and is independent of the coordinate system chosen to represent the vector. Similarly, every second rank tensor (such as the stress and the strain tensors) has three independent invariant quantities associated with it. One set of such invariants are the principal stresses of the stress tensor, which are just the eigenvalues of the stress tensor. Their direction vectors are the principal directions or eigenvectors.

A stress vector parallel to the normal unit vector is given by:

where is a constant of proportionality, and in this particular case corresponds to the magnitudes of the normal stress vectors or principal stresses.

Knowing that and, we have

$\begin{align} T_i^{(n)} &= \lambda n_i \\ \sigma_{ij}n_j &=\lambda n_i \\ \sigma_{ij}n_j -\lambda n_i &=0 \\ \left(\sigma_{ij}- \lambda\delta_{ij} \right)n_j &=0 \\ \end{align}\,\!$

This is a homogeneous system, i.e. equal to zero, of three linear equations where are the unknowns. To obtain a nontrivial (non-zero) solution for, the determinant matrix of the coefficients must be equal to zero, i.e. the system is singular. Thus,

$\left|\sigma_{ij}- \lambda\delta_{ij} \right|=\begin{vmatrix} \sigma_{11} - \lambda & \sigma_{12} & \sigma_{13} \\ \sigma_{21} & \sigma_{22} - \lambda & \sigma_{23} \\ \sigma_{31}& \sigma_{32} & \sigma_{33} - \lambda \\ \end{vmatrix}=0\,\!$

Expanding the determinant leads to the characteristic equation

where

$\begin{align} I_1 &= \sigma_{11}+\sigma_{22}+\sigma_{33} \\ &= \sigma_{kk} \\ I_2 &= \begin{vmatrix} \sigma_{22} & \sigma_{23} \\ \sigma_{32} & \sigma_{33} \\ \end{vmatrix} + \begin{vmatrix} \sigma_{11} & \sigma_{13} \\ \sigma_{31} & \sigma_{33} \\ \end{vmatrix} + \begin{vmatrix} \sigma_{11} & \sigma_{12} \\ \sigma_{21} & \sigma_{22} \\ \end{vmatrix} \\ &= \sigma_{11}\sigma_{22}+\sigma_{22}\sigma_{33}+\sigma_{11}\sigma_{33}-\sigma_{12}^2-\sigma_{23}^2-\sigma_{31}^2 \\ &= \frac{1}{2}\left(\sigma_{ii}\sigma_{jj}-\sigma_{ij}\sigma_{ji}\right) \\ I_3 &= \det(\sigma_{ij}) \\ &= \sigma_{11}\sigma_{22}\sigma_{33}+2\sigma_{12}\sigma_{23}\sigma_{31}-\sigma_{12}^2\sigma_{33}-\sigma_{23}^2\sigma_{11}-\sigma_{31}^2\sigma_{22} \\ \end{align} \,\!$

The characteristic equation has three real roots, i.e. not imaginary due to the symmetry of the stress tensor. The, and, are the principal stresses, functions of the eigenvalues . The eigenvalues are the roots of the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. The principal stresses are unique for a given stress tensor. Therefore, from the characteristic equation, the coefficients, and, called the first, second, and third stress invariants, respectively, have always the same value regardless of the coordinate system's orientation.

For each eigenvalue, there is a non-trivial solution for in the equation . These solutions are the principal directions or eigenvectors defining the plane where the principal stresses act. The principal stresses and principal directions characterize the stress at a point and are independent of the orientation.

A coordinate system with axes oriented to the principal directions implies that the normal stresses are the principal stresses and the stress tensor is represented by a diagonal matrix:

$\sigma_{ij}= \begin{bmatrix} \sigma_1 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & \sigma_2 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & \sigma_3 \end{bmatrix} \,\!$

The principal stresses can be combined to form the stress invariants, and . The first and third invariant are the trace and determinant respectively, of the stress tensor. Thus,

$\begin{align} I_1 &= \sigma_{1}+\sigma_{2}+\sigma_{3} \\ I_2 &= \sigma_{1}\sigma_{2}+\sigma_{2}\sigma_{3}+\sigma_{3}\sigma_{1} \\ I_3 &= \sigma_{1}\sigma_{2}\sigma_{3} \\ \end{align}\,\!$

Because of its simplicity, the principal coordinate system is often useful when considering the state of the elastic medium at a particular point. Principal stresses are often expressed in the following equation for evaluating stresses in the x and y directions or axial and bending stresses on a part. The principal normal stresses can then be used to calculate the von Mises stress and ultimately the safety factor and margin of safety.

Using just the part of the equation under the square root is equal to the maximum and minimum shear stress for plus and minus. This is shown as:

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