Shear may refer to:

Textile production

Animal shearing Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. As an ...

, the collection of wool from various species **

Sheep shearing Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or ...

*The removal of

nap A nap is a short period of sleep, typically taken during daytime hours as an adjunct to the usual nocturnal sleep period. Naps are most often taken as a response to drowsiness during waking hours. A nap is a form of biphasic or polyphasic sl ...

during wool cloth production

Science and technology

Engineering

Shear strength (soil) Shear strength is a term used in soil mechanics to describe the magnitude of the shear stress that a soil can sustain. The shear resistance of soil is a result of friction and interlocking of particles, and possibly cementation or bonding of par ...

, the shear strength of soil under loading *

Shear line (locksmithing) This is a glossary of locksmithing terms. Glossary References External links {{Locksmithing Locksmithing Locksmithing is the science and art of making and defe ...

, where the inner cylinder ends and the outer cylinder begins in a cylinder lock *

Shearing (manufacturing) Shearing, also known as die cutting, is a process that cuts stock without the formation of chips or the use of burning or melting. Strictly speaking, if the cutting blades are straight the process is called shearing; if the cutting blades are curve ...

, a metalworking process which cuts stock without the formation of chips or the use of burning or melting *

Shear (sheet metal) There are many types of shears used to shear or cut sheet metal. Types Alligator shear An alligator shear, historically known as a lever shear and sometimes as a crocodile shear, is a metal-cutting shear with a hinged jaw, powered by a flywheel o ...

, various tools to shear sheet metal *

Board shear Used extensively in bookbinding, a board shear is a large, hand-operated machine for cutting board or paper. Like scissors, a board shear uses two blades to apply shear stress exceeding the paper's shear strength in order to cut. The stationar ...

, in bookbinding, a tool to cut board or paper *

Shear pin {{unreferenced, date=September 2018 A shear pin is a mechanical detail designed to allow a specific outcome to occur once a predetermined force is applied. It can either function as a safeguard designed to break to protect other parts, or as a con ...

, in machinery, such as a plough, designed to shear (break) when a certain force is exceeded, to protect other components of the machine. *

Shearing interferometer The shearing interferometer is an extremely simple means to observe interference and to use this phenomenon to test the collimation of light beams, especially from laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical ampli ...

, in optics, a simple and very common means to check the collimation of beams by observing interference *Shearing in computer graphics, more commonly called

screen tearing Screen tearing is a visual artifact in video display where a display device shows information from multiple frames in a single screen draw. The artifact occurs when the video feed to the device is not synchronized with the display's refresh rat ...

Shear wall In structural engineering, a shear wall is a vertical element of a system that is designed to resist in-plane lateral forces, typically wind and seismic loads. In many jurisdictions, the International Building Code and International Residential Co ...

, a wall composed of braced panels to counter the effects of lateral load acting on a structure * Shear forming, different from conventional metal spinning in that a reduction of the wall thickness is induced

Mathematics/astronomy

Cosmic shear While the presence of any mass bends the path of light passing near it, this effect rarely produces the giant arcs and multiple images associated with strong gravitational lensing. Most lines of sight in the universe are thoroughly in the weak le ...

, an effect of distortion of image of distant galaxies due to deflection of light by matter, as predicted by general relativity (see also

gravitational lens A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This effect is known ...

) *

Shear mapping In plane geometry, a shear mapping is a linear map that displaces each point in a fixed direction, by an amount proportional to its signed distance from the line that is parallel to that direction and goes through the origin. This type of mappi ...

, a particular type of mapping in linear algebra, also called ''transvection'' *

Shear matrix In mathematics, a shear matrix or transvection is an elementary matrix that represents the addition of a multiple of one row or column to another. Such a matrix may be derived by taking the identity matrix and replacing one of the zero elements with ...

in geometry, a linear transformation shearing a space

Solid materials

Shear (geology) Boudinaged quartz vein (with strain fringe) showing ''Fault (geology)">sinistral shear sense'', Starlight Pit, Fortnum Gold Mine, Western Australia In geology, shear is the response of a rock to deformation usually by compressive stress and fo ...

, a form of fault in rocks *

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 ...

in physics, refers to a stress state that will cause shearing (see verb) when it exceeds a material's shear strength *

Shearing (physics) In continuum mechanics, shearing refers to the occurrence of a shear strain, which is a deformation of a material substance in which parallel internal surfaces slide past one another. It is induced by a shear stress in the material. Shear strai ...

, the deformation of a material substance in which parallel internal surfaces slide past one another *

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 ...

, shear strength

Wind/fluids

Simple shear Simple shear is a deformation in which parallel planes in a material remain parallel and maintain a constant distance, while translating relative to each other. In fluid mechanics In fluid mechanics, simple shear is a special case of deformati ...

, a special case of deformation of a fluid *

Shear (fluid) 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 oth ...

, in fluid dynamics, refers to the shear stresses and responses there to in fluids *

Shear rate In physics, shear rate is the rate at which a progressive shearing deformation is applied to some material. Simple shear The shear rate for a fluid flowing between two parallel plates, one moving at a constant speed and the other one stationary ...

, a gradient of velocity in a flowing material *

Shear line (meteorology) Surface weather analysis is a special type of weather map that provides a view of weather elements over a geographical area at a specified time based on information from ground-based weather stations. Weather maps are created by plotting or tra ...

, an area of wind shear *

Wind shear Wind shear (or windshear), sometimes referred to as wind gradient, is a difference in wind speed and/or direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere. Atmospheric wind shear is normally described as either vertical or horizontal ...

, a difference in wind speed or direction between two wind currents in the atmosphere

Surnames

Shear (surname) Shear is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Barry Shear (1923–1979), American film director and producer *Byron D. Shear (1869–1929), American politician *Claudia Shear (born 1962), American actress and playwright *Cornelius L ...

Shearing (surname) Shearing is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Dinah Shearing (1928–2021), Australian actress *George Shearing (1919–2011), British jazz pianist * Miriam Shearing (born 1935), American lawyer and judge *Peter Shearing Peter ...

Other

Shear (comics) Shear (Walther Feyzioglu) is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero (but not in the Marvel Universe), member of the Strikeforce: Morituri (a series in its own mostly self-contained continuity). The character was created by Peter B. Gil ...

, a Marvel Comics superhero