Chapter 2

EQUILIBRIUM AND
COMPATIBILITY

We can think of an elastic solid as a highly redundant framework — each particle is

built-in to its neighbours. For such a framework, we expect to get some equations from
considerations of equilibrium, but not as many as there are unknowns. The deficit
is made up by compatibility conditions — statements that the deformed components
must fit together. These latter conditions will relate the dimensions and hence the
strains of the deformed components and in order to express them in terms of the same
unknowns as the stresses (forces) we need to make use of the stress-strain relations
as applied to each component separately.
If we were to approximate the continuous elastic body by a system of intercon-
nected elastic bars, this would be an exact description of the solution procedure. The
only difference in treating the continuous medium is that the system of algebraic
equations is replaced by partial differential equations describing the same physical or
geometrical principles.

2.1 Equilibrium equations

We consider a small rectangular block of material — side — as shown in
Figure 2.1. We suppose that there is a body force1, per unit volume and that
the stresses vary with position so that the stress components on opposite faces of the
block differ by the differential quantities etc. Only those stress components
which act in the are shown in Figure 2.1 for clarity.
1
A body force is one that acts directly on every particle of the body, rather than being applied
by tractions at its boundaries and transmitted to the various particles by means of internal stresses.
This is an important distinction which will be discussed further in Chapter 7, below. The commonest
example of a body force is that due to gravity.

23
24 CHAPTER 2. EQUILIBRIUM AND COMPATIBILITY

Resolving forces in the we find

Hence, dividing through by and proceeding to the limit as these infinites-

imals tend to zero, we obtain

Similarly, we have

or in suffix notation

These are the differential equations of equilibrium.

2.2 Compatibility equations

The easiest way to satisfy the equations of compatibility — as in framework problems
— is to express all the strains in terms of the displacements. In a framework, this
ensures that the components fit together by identifying the displacement of points in