In materials science, shear modulus or modulus of rigidity, denoted by G, or sometimes S
or μ, is defined as the ratio of shear stress to the shear strain:
where = shear stress;
is the force which acts is the area on which the force acts
in engineering, = shear strain.
Elsewhere, is the transverse displacement
is the initial length Shear modulus' derived SI unit is the pascal,
although it is usually expressed in gigapascals or in thousands of pounds per square inch.
Its dimensional form is M1L−1T−2.
The shear modulus is always positive.
Explanation The shear modulus is one of several quantities
for measuring the stiffness of materials.
All of them arise in the generalized Hooke's law:
Young's modulus describes the material's response to linear stress,
the bulk modulus describes the material's response to uniform pressure
the shear modulus describes the material's response to shear stress.
The shear modulus is concerned with the deformation of a solid when it experiences a force parallel
to one of its surfaces while its opposite face experiences an opposing force.
In the case of an object that's shaped like a rectangular prism, it will deform into a
parallelepiped.
Anisotropic materials such as wood, paper and also essentially all single crystals exhibit
differing material response to stress or strain when tested in different directions.
In this case one may need to use the full tensor-expression of the elastic constants,
rather than a single scalar value.
One possible definition of a fluid would be a material with zero shear modulus.
Waves
In homogeneous and isotropic solids, there are two kinds of waves, pressure waves and
shear waves.
The velocity of a shear wave, is controlled by the shear modulus,
where G is the shear modulus
is the solid's density.
Shear modulus of metals
The shear modulus of metals is usually observed to decrease with increasing temperature.
At high pressures, the shear modulus also appears to increase with the applied pressure.
Correlations between the melting temperature, vacancy formation energy, and the shear modulus
have been observed in many metals.
Several models exist that attempt to predict the shear modulus of metals.
Shear modulus models that have been used in plastic flow computations include:
the MTS shear modulus model developed by and used in conjunction with the Mechanical Threshold
Stress plastic flow stress model.
the Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan shear modulus model developed by and used in conjunction
with the Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan-Lund flow stress model.
the Nadal and LePoac shear modulus model that uses Lindemann theory to determine the temperature
dependence and the SCG model for pressure dependence of the shear modulus.
MTS shear modulus model The MTS shear modulus model has the form:
where µ0 is the shear modulus at 0 K, and D and T0 are material constants.
SCG shear modulus model The Steinberg-Cochran-Guinan shear modulus
model is pressure dependent and has the form
where, µ0 is the shear modulus at the reference state, p is the pressure, and T is the temperature.
NP shear modulus model The Nadal-Le Poac shear modulus model is a
modified version of the SCG model.
The empirical temperature dependence of the shear modulus in the SCG model is replaced
with an equation based on Lindemann melting theory.
The NP shear modulus model has the form:
where
and µ0 is the shear modulus at 0 K and ambient pressure, ζ is a material parameter, kb is
the Boltzmann constant, m is the atomic mass, and f is the Lindemann constant.
See also Shear strength
Dynamic modulus Impulse excitation technique
References