On displacement methods in planar anisotropic elasticity

Two displacement formulation methods are presented for problems of planar anisotropic elasticity. The first displacement method is based on solving the two governing partial differential equations simultaneously/ This method is a recapitulation of the orignal work of Eshelby, Read and Shockley 7] on generalized plane deformations of anisotropic elastic materials in the context of planar anisotropic elasticity.The second displacement method is based on solving the two governing equations separately. This formulation introduces a displacement function, which satisfies a fourth-order partial differential equation that is identical in the form to the one given by Lekhnitskii 6] for monoclinic materials using a stress function. Moreover, this method parallels the traditional Airy stress function method and thus the Lekhnitskii method for pure plane problems. Both the new approach and the Airy stress function method start with the equilibrium equations and use the same extended version of Green's theorem (Chou and Pagano 13], p. 114; Gao 11]) to derive the expressions for stress or displacement components in terms of a potential (stress or displacement) function (see also Gao 10, 11]). It is therefore anticipated that the displacement function involved in this new method could also be evaluated from measured data, as was done by Lin and Rowlands 17] to determine the Airy stress function experimentally.The two different displacement methods lead to two general solutions for problems of planar anisotropic elasticity. Although the two solutions differ in expressions, both of the depend on the complex roots of the same characteristic equation. Furthermore, this characteristic equation is identical to that obtained by Lekhnitskii 6] using a stress formulation. It is therefore concluded that the two displacement methods and Lekhnitskii's stress method are all equivalent for problems of planar anisotropic elasticity (see Gao and Rowlands 8] for detailed discussions).