The Proportional Anisotropic Elastic Invariants

There are two proportional invariants for a linear isotropic material, the hydrostatic invariant, and the deviatoric invariant. The former is proportional to the trace of the tensor and the latter is proportional to the trace of the square of the associated deviatoric tensor. The hydrostatic stress and strain and the von Mises stress and strain are directly related to the hydrostatic and deviatoric proportional invariants, respectively, for an isotropic, linear elastic material. For each anisotropic linear elastic material symmetry there are up to six proportional invariants. In this paper we illustrate the six proportional invariants of an orthotropic elastic material using the elastic constants for spruce as the numerical example. The proportional elastic invariants play a role in anisotropic linear elasticity similar to the roles played by the hydrostatic stress and strain and the von Mises stress and strain in isotropic elasticity. They are the unique parameters whose contours represent both the stress and the strain distributions. They also have potential for representing failure or fracture criteria.