ON STATIC SIMILARITY DEFORMATIONS FOR ISOTROPIC MATERIALS

For static deformations of isotropic materials satisfying the principle of material indifference, the governing equations remain invariant under arbitrary orthogonal rotations of the material and spatial coordinate systems. Moreover, the basic equations are also invariant under the same change of length scale for both coordinate systems. The general functional form of the similarity deformation corresponding to these invariances is deduced. Although these invariances involve seven arbitrary constants, it is shown that by an appropriate selection of coordinates only three arbitrary constants are involved in an essential way.