Extreme conditions of elastic constants and principal axes of anisotropy

Resumo

This paper describes the derivation of extreme conditions of each elasticity coefficient (Young’s modulus, shear modulus, et al.,) for the general case of linear-elastic anisotropic materials. The stationarity conditions are obtained, and they determine the orthogonal coordinate systems being the principal axes of anisotropy, where the number of independent elasticity constants decreases from 21 to 18 and, in some cases of anisotropy, to 15 or lower. The example of a material with cubic symmetry is given.