1 STRESS
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.1.1 Structural Design, Design Criteria, and Design Goals
• Structural Design Concepts:
o In all engineering construction, the component parts of a structure or a machine must be
assigned definite physical sizes.
o Such parts must be properly proportioned to resist the actual or probable forces that may be
imposed upon them.
• Three basic Aspects for the Structural Design:
o Strength Aspects:
▪ The walls of a pressure vessel must be of adequate strength to withstand the internal
pressure;
▪ The floors of a building must be sufficiently strong for their intended purpose;
▪ The shaft of a machine must be of adequate size to carry the required torque;
▪ A wing of an airplane must safely withstand the aerodynamic loads that may come upon
it in takeoff, flight, and landing.
o Stiffness Aspects:
Likewise:
▪ The parts of a composite structure must be rigid enough so as not to deflect or "sag"
excessively when in operation under the imposed loads.
▪ A floor of a building may be strong enough but yet may deflect excessively, which in some
instances may cause misalignment of manufacturing equipment, or in other cases result
in the cracking of a plaster ceiling attached underneath.
o Stability Aspects:
Also:
▪ A member may be so thin or slender that, upon being subjected to compressive loading, it
will collapse through buckling, i.e., the initial configuration of a member may become
unstable.
▪ The ability to determine the maximum load that a slender column can carry before
buckling occurs or the safe level of vacuum that can be maintained by a vessel is of
great practical importance.
Mechanics of Materials Chapter 1: Stress
• Goals for the Structural Design:
In engineering practice, the design criteria must be met with:
o The minimum expenditure of a given material.
o Aside from cost, at times-as in the design of satellites-the feasibility and success of the whole
mission may depend on the weight of a package.
1.1.2 The Subject of Mechanics of Materials
• The subject of mechanics of materials, or the strength of materials, as it has been traditionally
called in the past, involves analytical methods for determining:
o The strength,
o The stiffness (deformation characteristics),
o The stability
of the various load carrying members.
• Alternately, the subject may be called the mechanics of solid deformable bodies, or simply
mechanics of solids.
• A Brief History of the Subject:
o Mechanics of solids is a fairly old subject, generally dated from the work of Galileo in the
early part of the seventeenth century.
o Prior to his investigations into the behavior of solid bodies under loads, constructors followed
precedents and empirical rules.
o Galileo was the first to attempt to explain the behavior of some of the members under load
on a rational basis.
o He studied members in tension and compression, and notably beams used in the
construction of hulls of ships for the Italian navy.
o Of course, much progress has been made since that time, but it must be noted in passing
that much is owed in the development of this subject to the French investigators, among
whom a group of outstanding men such as Coulomb, Poisson, Navier, St. Venant, and Cauchy
who worked at the break of the nineteenth century, has left an indelible impression on this
subject.
• Broad Applications of the Subject
o The subject of mechanics of solids cuts broadly across all branches of the engineering
profession with remarkably many applications.
o Its methods are needed:
▪ By designers of offshore structures;
▪ By civil engineers in the design of bridges and buildings;
▪ By mining engineers and architectural engineers, each of whom is interested in
structures;
▪ By nuclear engineers in the design of reactor components;
▪ By mechanical and chemical engineers, who rely upon the methods of this subject for
the design of machinery and pressure vessels;
▪ By metallurgists, who need the fundamental concepts of this subject in order to
understand how to improve existing materials further;
▪ Finally, by electrical engineers, who need the methods of this subject because of the
importance of the mechanical engineering phases of many portions of electrical
equipment.
• Characteristic methods for the mechanics of solids:
o Engineering mechanics of solids, contrasted with the mathematical theory of continuum
mechanics, has characteristic methods all its own, although the two approaches overlap.
o It is a definite discipline and one of the most fundamental subjects of an engineering
curriculums standing alongside such other basic subjects as fluid mechanics,
thermodynamics, as well as electrical theory.
• Mechanical characteristics of the materials are essential for the mechanics of solid:
o The behavior of a member subjected to forces depends not only on the fundamental laws of
Newtonian mechanics that govern the equilibrium of the forces, but also on the mechanical
characteristics of the materials of which the member is fabricated.
Dr. Salah R. Al Zaidee and DR. Rafaa M. Abbas Academic Year 2024-2025 Page 2
1
Mechanics of Materials Chapter 1: Stress
o The necessary information regarding the mechanical characteristics of the materials comes
from the laboratory, where materials are subjected to the action of accurately known forces and
the behavior of test specimens is observed with particular regard to such phenomena as the
occurrence of breaks, deformations, etc. Determination of such phenomena is a vital part
of the subject, but this branch is left to other books1.
• Analytical or Mathematical Part of the Mechanics of Solids:
o This course is concerned with the analytical or mathematical part of the subject in
contradistinction to experimentation.
o For these reasons, it is seen that mechanics of solids is a blended science of experiment and
Newtonian postulates of analytical mechanics. It is presumed that the reader has some
familiarity in both of these areas.
o In the development of this subject, statics plays a particularly dominant role.
• Scope of the course:
o This course will be limited to the simpler topics of the subject.
o In spite of the relative simplicity of the methods employed here, the resulting techniques are
unusually useful as they apply to a vast number of technically important problems.
• Role of problems and diagrams in mastering the mechanics of solids:
o The subject matter can be mastered best by solving numerous problems.
o The number of basic formulas necessary for the analysis and design of structural and
machine members by the methods of engineering mechanics of solids is relatively small;
however, throughout this study, the reader must develop an ability to visualize a problem and
the nature of the quantities being computed.
o Complete, carefully drawn diagrammatic sketches of problems to be solved will pay large
dividends in a quicker and more complete mastery of this subject.
1.1.3 Further on History of Mechanics of Solids2*
• Galileo’s Work:
o The behavior of a beam subjected to bending was first investigated by Galileo in 1638.
o In his famous book Dialogues on Two New Sciences, he studied the equilibrium of a stone
cantilever beam of rectangular section and found that the beam could support twice as much
load at the center as at the free end, because a same magnitude of ‘bending moment’ was
produced at the fixed end.
o Using the elementary knowledge of equilibrium, he observed that, for beams ‘of equal length
but unequal thickness, the resistance to fracture increases in the same ratio as the cube of the
thickness (provided the thickness-to-width
ratio remains unchanged)’.
o Galileo’s work represented the beginning of
a scientific discipline known as the
‘Mechanics of Materials.’
• Galileo’s Problem and Computing of Beam
Deflection:
o Since Galileo’s beam was considered a rigid
body, the deflections of the beam could not be
evaluated, thus creating the mystery known
as ‘Galileo’s problem’.
o The solution to Galileo’s problem required
two additional sources of information in
addition to the principle of equilibrium.
1
W. D. Callister, Materials Science and Engineering (New York: Wiley, 1985).
J. F. Shackelford, Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers (New York: Macmillan, 1985).
L. H. Van Vlack, Materials Science for Engineers, 5th ed., Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1985).
2
The section is based on “Unified Theory of Concrete Structures by Thomas T. C. Hsu and Yi-Lung Mo 2015.
Dr. Salah R. Al Zaidee and DR. Rafaa M. Abbas Academic Year 2024-2025 Page 3
1
Mechanics of Materials Chapter 1: Stress
o Stress-strain relation:
The first source came from an understanding of the mechanical properties of materials,
summarized as follows:
▪ In 1678, Hooke measured the elongations of a long, thin metal wire suspended from a
high ceiling at one end and carrying a weight at the bottom end. By systematically
varying the weight, he reported that the ‘deformation is proportional to force’ for wires
of various materials under light loads.
▪ In 1705, James Bernoulli, a member of a prominent family of Swiss scholars, defined
the concept of stress (force divided by area) and strain (displacement divided by original
length).
▪ This was followed by Euler’s postulation in 1727 of ‘stress is proportional to strain’.
▪ The proportionality constant between stress and strain 𝐸 was measured by Young in 1804
for many materials and was known as Young’s modulus.
▪ It took 166 years to develop the well-known Hooke’s law.
o Compatibility:
The second source of information came from the observation of deformations in beams.
▪ In relating the radius of curvature of a beam to the bending moment, Jacob Bernoulli,
James’ brother, postulated in 1705 the well-known ‘Bernoulli’s hypothesis’, i.e., ‘a plane
section remains plane’.
▪ It should be noted that Jacob Bernoulli misunderstood the neutral axis and took it at the
concave surface of the beam. As a result, his derived flexural rigidity EI was twice the
correct value.
▪ Nevertheless, based on Bernoulli’s hypothesis and assuming the proportionality between
curvature and bending, Euler correctly derived in 1757 the elastic deflection curve of a beam
by using the newly developed mathematical tool of calculus.
▪ Although Euler was unable to theoretically derive the flexural rigidity, he was able to
correctly use Bernoulli’s strain compatibility condition.
• Put the Three Principles together and Solving of Galileo’s Problems:
o As history bears out, the correct derivation of the flexural rigidity EI, the key to the solution
of Galileo’s problem, requires the integration of all three sources of information on stress
equilibrium, strain compatibility and Hooke’s law of materials.
o These three principles were put together correctly by a French professor, Navier , in 1826. In
his landmark book (Navier, 1826), he systematically and rigorously derived the bending theory
using these three principles, thus solving Galileo’s problem after almost two centuries.
o Indeed, Navier’s comprehensive book was the first textbook
on the mechanics of materials, because these three principles
were also applied to shear and torsion (circular sections
only). The book showed that a correct load–deformation
relationship of a beam must be analyzed according to Navier’s
three principles of the mechanics of materials.
1.1.4 Layout of the Chapter
• There are three major parts in this chapter.
• The general concepts of stress are treated first.
• This is followed with a particular case of stress distribution in
axially loaded members.
• Strength design criteria based on stress are discussed in the last
part of the chapter.
Claude-Louis Navier 10 February
1785 to 21 August 1836 (aged 51).
Dr. Salah R. Al Zaidee and DR. Rafaa M. Abbas Academic Year 2024-2025 Page 4
1
