![Shear scherung](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Shear_scherung.svg)
In
materials science, shear modulus or modulus of rigidity, denoted by ''G'', or sometimes ''S'' or ''μ'', is a measure of the
elastic
Elastic is a word often used to describe or identify certain types of elastomer, elastic used in garments or stretchable fabrics.
Elastic may also refer to:
Alternative name
* Rubber band, ring-shaped band of rubber used to hold objects togeth ...
shear stiffness of a material and is defined as the ratio of
shear stress
Shear stress, often denoted by (Greek: tau), is the component of stress coplanar with a material cross section. It arises from the shear force, the component of force vector parallel to the material cross section. ''Normal stress'', on the ot ...
to the
shear strain
In physics, deformation is the continuum mechanics transformation of a body from a ''reference'' configuration to a ''current'' configuration. A configuration is a set containing the positions of all particles of the body.
A deformation can ...
:
:
where
:
= shear stress
:
is the force which acts
:
is the area on which the force acts
:
= shear strain. In engineering
, elsewhere
:
is the transverse displacement
:
is the initial length of the area.
The derived
SI unit of shear modulus is the
pascal
Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name
* Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...
(Pa), although it is usually expressed in
gigapascal
The pascal (symbol: Pa) is the unit of pressure in the International System of Units (SI), and is also used to quantify internal pressure, stress, Young's modulus, and ultimate tensile strength. The unit, named after Blaise Pascal, is defined as ...
s (GPa) or in thousand
pounds per square inch
The pound per square inch or, more accurately, pound-force per square inch (symbol: lbf/in2; abbreviation: psi) is a unit of pressure or of stress based on avoirdupois units. It is the pressure resulting from a force of one pound-force applied to ...
(ksi). Its
dimensional form is M
1L
−1T
−2, replacing ''force'' by ''mass'' times ''acceleration''.
Explanation
The shear modulus is one of several quantities for measuring the stiffness of materials. All of them arise in the generalized
Hooke's law
In physics, Hooke's law is an empirical law which states that the force () needed to extend or compress a spring (device), spring by some distance () Proportionality (mathematics)#Direct_proportionality, scales linearly with respect to that ...
:
*
Young's modulus
Young's modulus E, the Young modulus, or the modulus of elasticity in tension or compression (i.e., negative tension), is a mechanical property that measures the tensile or compressive stiffness of a solid material when the force is applied leng ...
''E'' describes the material's strain response to uniaxial stress in the direction of this stress (like pulling on the ends of a wire or putting a weight on top of a column, with the wire getting longer and the column losing height),
* the
Poisson's ratio
In materials science and solid mechanics, Poisson's ratio \nu ( nu) is a measure of the Poisson effect, the deformation (expansion or contraction) of a material in directions perpendicular to the specific direction of loading. The value of Pois ...
''ν'' describes the response in the directions orthogonal to this uniaxial stress (the wire getting thinner and the column thicker),
* the
bulk modulus
The bulk modulus (K or B) of a substance is a measure of how resistant to compression the substance is. It is defined as the ratio of the infinitesimal pressure increase to the resulting ''relative'' decrease of the volume.
Other moduli describe ...
''K'' describes the material's response to (uniform)
hydrostatic pressure
Fluid statics or hydrostatics is the branch of fluid mechanics that studies the condition of the equilibrium of a floating body and submerged body "fluids at hydrostatic equilibrium and the pressure in a fluid, or exerted by a fluid, on an imme ...
(like the pressure at the bottom of the ocean or a deep swimming pool),
* the shear modulus ''G'' describes the material's response to shear stress (like cutting it with dull scissors).
These moduli are not independent, and for
isotropic
Isotropy is uniformity in all orientations; it is derived . Precise definitions depend on the subject area. Exceptions, or inequalities, are frequently indicated by the prefix ' or ', hence ''anisotropy''. ''Anisotropy'' is also used to describe ...
materials they are connected via the equations
:
The shear modulus is concerned with the deformation of a solid when it experiences a force parallel to one of its surfaces while its opposite face experiences an opposing force (such as friction). In the case of an object shaped like a rectangular prism, it will deform into a
parallelepiped
In geometry, a parallelepiped is a three-dimensional figure formed by six parallelograms (the term ''rhomboid'' is also sometimes used with this meaning). By analogy, it relates to a parallelogram just as a cube relates to a square. In Euclidea ...
.
Anisotropic
Anisotropy () is the property of a material which allows it to change or assume different properties in different directions, as opposed to isotropy. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physic ...
materials such as
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...
,
paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...
and also essentially all single crystals exhibit differing material response to stress or strain when tested in different directions. In this case, one may need to use the full
tensor-expression of the elastic constants, rather than a single scalar value.
One possible definition of a
fluid
In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shear ...
would be a material with zero shear modulus.
Shear waves
In homogeneous and
isotropic
Isotropy is uniformity in all orientations; it is derived . Precise definitions depend on the subject area. Exceptions, or inequalities, are frequently indicated by the prefix ' or ', hence ''anisotropy''. ''Anisotropy'' is also used to describe ...
solids, there are two kinds of waves,
pressure waves and
shear waves
In physics, a transverse wave is a wave whose oscillations are perpendicular to the direction of the wave's advance. This is in contrast to a longitudinal wave which travels in the direction of its oscillations. Water waves are an example of t ...
. The velocity of a shear wave,
is controlled by the shear modulus,
:
where
:G is the shear modulus
:
is the solid's
density
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...
.
Shear modulus of metals
![CuShearMTS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/CuShearMTS.svg)
The shear modulus of metals is usually observed to decrease with increasing temperature. At high pressures, the shear modulus also appears to increase with the applied pressure. Correlations between the melting temperature, vacancy formation energy, and the shear modulus have been observed in many metals.
[March, N. H., (1996)]
''Electron Correlation in Molecules and Condensed Phases''
Springer, p. 363
Several models exist that attempt to predict the shear modulus of metals (and possibly that of alloys). Shear modulus models that have been used in plastic flow computations include:
# the MTS shear modulus model developed by
and used in conjunction with the Mechanical Threshold Stress (MTS) plastic flow stress model.
# the Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan (SCG) shear modulus model developed by
and used in conjunction with the Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan-Lund (SCGL) flow stress model.
# the Nadal and LePoac (NP) shear modulus model
that uses
Lindemann theory to determine the temperature dependence and the SCG model for pressure dependence of the shear modulus.
MTS model
The MTS shear modulus model has the form:
:
where
is the shear modulus at
, and
and
are material constants.
SCG model
The Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan (SCG) shear modulus model is pressure dependent and has the form
:
where, μ
0 is the shear modulus at the reference state (''T'' = 300 K, ''p'' = 0, η = 1), ''p'' is the pressure, and ''T'' is the temperature.
NP model
The Nadal-Le Poac (NP) shear modulus model is a modified version of the SCG model. The empirical temperature dependence of the shear modulus in the SCG model is replaced with an equation based on
Lindemann melting theory. The NP shear modulus model has the form:
:
where
:
and μ
0 is the shear modulus at absolute zero and ambient pressure, ζ is a area, ''m'' is the
atomic mass
The atomic mass (''m''a or ''m'') is the mass of an atom. Although the SI unit of mass is the kilogram (symbol: kg), atomic mass is often expressed in the non-SI unit dalton (symbol: Da) – equivalently, unified atomic mass unit (u). 1&nbs ...
, and ''f'' is the
Lindemann constant.
Shear relaxation modulus
The shear relaxation modulus
is the
time-dependent generalization of the shear modulus :
:
.
See also
*
Dynamic modulus Dynamic modulus (sometimes complex modulusThe Open University (UK), 2000. ''T838 Design and Manufacture with Polymers: Solid properties and design'', page 30. Milton Keynes: The Open University.) is the ratio of stress to strain under ''vibratory c ...
*
Impulse excitation technique
The impulse excitation technique (IET) is a non-destructive material characterization technique to determine the elastic properties and internal friction of a material of interest. It measures the resonant frequencies in order to calculate the Youn ...
*
Shear strength
In engineering, shear strength is the strength of a material or component against the type of yield or structural failure when the material or component fails in shear. A shear load is a force that tends to produce a sliding failure on a materia ...
*
Seismic moment Seismic moment is a quantity used by seismologists to measure the size of an earthquake. The scalar seismic moment M_0 is defined by the equation
M_0=\mu AD, where
*\mu is the shear modulus of the rocks involved in the earthquake (in pascals (Pa) ...
References
{{Authority control
Materials science
Elasticity (physics)