Assignment 2

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The Eigenvalue problem, the Cauchy stress

tensor and Mohr's Circle
1. Introduction
Designing and building structures is an everyday aspect for an engineer and
knowing the point at which a structure will fail is vital for this field. The Cauchy Stress
Tensor analysis the stresses of materials that are experiencing small deformations.
In this report the Cauchy Stress Tensor will be evaluated to find its eigenvectors and
eigenvalues which will be then used to draw a Mohrs circle that determines the
maxim stress in a structural member.

2. Procedure
2.1 Finding the stresses:
The Cauchy Stress Tensor was represented in the following matrix form:

C =

C=

To find the total stress in the direction normal to the plane the Cauchy stress Tensor
was multiplied by a unit vector, [cos 45, sin 45, 0], that is normal to the plane. The
normal stress and the shear stress was found as shown in figure 1.
.
Total stress, ST = .

Magnitude, magST = 190.394

Normal stress, SN =

Magnitude, magSN = 134.629

.
Shear stress, SS = .

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Magnitude, magSS = 55.765

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Figure 1: Finding the Total stress, Normal stress and Shear stress.

2.2 Finding the Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues

The principle stresses occur when all of the stress is normal and therefore they are equal to
the eigenvalues of the Cauchy Stress Tensor. The code, [V,D] =eig(C), is the code that is
used to find the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the Cauchy Stress Tensor (C). V is a matrix
whose columns are the corresponding eigenvectors while D is a diagonal matrix containing
the eigenvalues. The code used is shown in figure 2.
The three Principle stresses calculated were 0, 34.8612 and 215.1388 and the three
eigenvectors were:
V1 = [0, 0, 1]

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V2 = [-0.9571, 0.2898, 0]

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V3 = [0.2898, 0.9571, 0]

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Figure2: Code to find the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the matrix C.

To check if the stresses were purely normal stresses the Cauchy Stress Tensor was
projected in the direction of the eigenvectors. A dot product of the projected Cauchy Stress
Tensor and the eigenvector then yields the normal stress in that direction. This is shown in
figure 3.

Figure 3: Finding the normal stress in the direction of the eigenvectors.

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The normal stress is then subtracted from the projected Cauchy Stress Tensor and if the
result is zero then there are no shear stresses. The stresses are therefore purely normal
stresses. The code used to check this is shown in figure 4.

Figure 4: If and else statements to check if the stresses are pure.

2.3 Plotting the Mohrs Circle

The eigenvalues were used to plot the Mohrs Circle by plotting them on the X-axis
and then drawing three circles that pass through two of the principle stresses. The
3rd eigenvalue corresponded to the diameter of the largest circle while the 2 nd
eigenvalue corresponded to the diameter of the smallest circle. The diameter of the
middle circle is simply the difference of the two diameters. The function
[x,y]=Mcircles(D1,D2,D3) was used to plot the three circles. This is shown in figure
5. The Mohrs Circle is shown in figure 6.

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Figure 5: Function that plots the three circles.

Figure 6: Mohrs Circle showing the maximum stress.

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The maximum shear stress in the structural member was calculated by measuring
the radius of the largest circle. This had a value of 107.569 N/m^2, and the shear
stress at which the aluminium fails is 150 N/m^2. Therefore the aluminium sample
will not fail. This is shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: Code to check if the aluminium sample will fail

3. Conclusion
The eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the Cauchy Stress Tensor were successfully
found and thus a Mohrs circle was drawn to determine the maximum stresses on the
structure. It was also concluded that if the structure was made of aluminium it will not
fail. These information could not have been obtained without using MATLAB.
MATLAB is a powerful tool that can be used to simplify processes and find stresses
on a structure and the point at which it will fail. It can perform various calculations
and enables us to visualise the results by producing graphs.

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