Anisotropic Elastic Materials that Uncouple All Three Displacement Components, and Existence of One-Displacement Green's Function

Abstract

It was shown in an earlier paper that, under a two-dimensional deformation, there are anisotropic elastic materials for which the antiplane displacement u ₃ and the inplane displacements u ₁, u ₂ are uncoupled but the antiplane stresses σ₃₁, σ₃₂ and the inplane stresses σ₁₁, σ₁₂, σ₂₂ remain coupled. The conditions for this to be possible were derived, but they have a complicated expression. In this paper new and simpler conditions are obtained, and a general anisotropic elastic material that satisfies the conditions is presented. For this material, and for certain monoclinic materials with the symmetry plane at x ₃ = 0, we show that the unnormalized Stroh eigenvectors a _k for k = 1, 2, 3 are all real. The matrix A =[a ₁, a ₂, a ₃] is a unit matrix when the material has a symmetry plane at x ₂ = 0. Thus any one of the u ₁, u ₂, u ₃ can be the only nonzero displacement, and the solution is a one-displacement field. Application to the Green's function due to a line of concentrated force f and a line dislocation with Burgers vector v in the infinite space, the half-space with a rigid boundary, and the infinite space with an elliptic rigid inclusion shows that one can indeed have a one-displacement field u ₁, u ₂ or u ₃. One can also have a two-displacement field polarized on a plane other than the (x ₁, x ₂)-plane. The material that uncouples u ₁, u ₂, u ₃ is not as restrictive as one might have thought. It can be triclinic, monoclinic, orthotropic, tetragonal, transversely isotropic, or cubic. However, it cannot be isotropic.