Basic concepts and equations of solid mechanics

ABSTRACT This paper provides a brief overview of the basic concepts and equations that will be used by other papers in the special issue on Damage and Fracture in Geomaterials. The first section introduces the tensorial notation, defines the basic tensor operations and presents the formalism for the volumetric-deviatoric decomposition of stress and strain. The second section shows how to transcribe tensorial relations in the engineering notation. The basic equations describing a linear elastic deformable body are summarized in the third section, and their discretization by the finite element method is described in the fourth section, with an extension to nonlinear constitutive relations in the fifth section. The last section outlines a thermodynamic framework based on two potentials—the free energy and the dissipation potential.