Reduced equilibrium equations for perfectly elastic materials

Sufficient conditions are given on the coordinate systems which enable reduced equilibrium equations to be derived for perfectly elastic materials involving deformations which depend in an essential way only on two of the three coordinates. Reduced equilibrium equations given previously for plane and axially symmetric deformations are special cases of the equations given here. These equations considerably reduce the calculations involved in investigating possible solutions of finite elasticity, either exact semi-inverse solutions or approximate perturbation solutions. Moreover a formula for the pressure function appearing in the reduced equilibrium equations is given which relates to the corresponding pressure function associated with the inverse deformation. This formula is similar to one given previously for fully three dimensional deformations.