Anisotropic Homogeneous Media
For anisotropic media, the stiffness tensor is more complicated. The symmetry of the stress tensor means that there are at most 6 different elements of stress. Similarly, there are at most 6 different elements of the strain tensor . Hence the 4th rank stiffness tensor may be written as a 2nd rank matrix . Voigt notation is the standard mapping for tensor indices,
With this notation, one can write the elasticity matrix for any linearly elastic medium as:
As shown, the matrix is symmetric, because of the linear relation between stress and strain. Hence, there are at most 21 different elements of .
The isotropic special case has 2 independent elements:
The simplest anisotropic case, that of cubic symmetry has 3 independent elements:
The case of transverse isotropy, also called polar anisotropy, (with a single axis (the 3-axis) of symmetry) has 5 independent elements:
When the transverse isotropy is weak (i.e. close to isotropy), an alternative parametrization utilizing Thomsen parameters, is convenient for the formulas for wave speeds.
The case of orthotropy (the symmetry of a brick) has 9 independent elements:
Read more about this topic: Linear Elasticity
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