Nonlinear Elasticity presents a description of research and result on various nonlinear problems arising in elasticity. This book covers a variety of topics, including shallow elastic membranes, nonlinear elasticity, finite deformations of elastic solids, and nonlinear thermoelasticity. Organized into 11 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the nonlinear theory of buckling of elastic shells. This text then examines the ways in which the energy criterion supplies a necessary condition for asymptotic stability. Other chapters consider some of the phenomena, both physical and mathematical, that typify the large deformation of a nonlinearly elastic body. This book discusses as well the concepts leading to a criterion for instabilities and discusses how the criterion applies to some well-known ideal materials. The final chapter deals with the structure of strong shocks and studies the evolution of such a shock produced by a suddenly-applied strain. This book is a valuable resource for mathematicians.

Comprehensive introduction to nonlinear elasticity for graduates and researchers, covering new developments in the field.

The scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, led by Jas. Bernoulli and Euler, created a coherent theory of the mechanics of strings and rods undergoing planar deformations. They introduced the basic con cepts of strain, both extensional and flexural, of contact force with its com ponents of tension and shear force, and of contact couple. They extended Newton's Law of Motion for a mass point to a law valid for any deformable body. Euler formulated its independent and much subtler complement, the Angular Momentum Principle. (Euler also gave effective variational characterizations of the governing equations. ) These scientists breathed life into the theory by proposing, formulating, and solving the problems of the suspension bridge, the catenary, the velaria, the elastica, and the small transverse vibrations of an elastic string. (The level of difficulty of some of these problems is such that even today their descriptions are sel dom vouchsafed to undergraduates. The realization that such profound and beautiful results could be deduced by mathematical reasoning from fundamental physical principles furnished a significant contribution to the intellectual climate of the Age of Reason. ) At first, those who solved these problems did not distinguish between linear and nonlinear equations, and so were not intimidated by the latter. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Cauchy had constructed the basic framework of three-dimensional continuum mechanics on the founda tions built by his eighteenth-century predecessors.