In physics, elasticity (from Greek ἐλαστός "ductible") is the ability of a body to resist a

distorting influence and to return to its original size and shape when that influence or force is
removed. Solid objects will deform when adequate forces are applied to them. If the material is
elastic, the object will return to its initial shape and size when these forces are removed.

The physical reasons for elastic behavior can be quite different for different materials. In metals,
the atomic lattice changes size and shape when forces are applied (energy is added to the
system). When forces are removed, the lattice goes back to the original lower energy state. For
rubbers and other polymers, elasticity is caused by the stretching of polymer chains when forces
are applied.

Perfect elasticity is an approximation of the real world. The most elastic body in modern science
found is quartz fiber[citation needed] and phosphor bronze, but even this is not a perfect elastic body.
The perfect elastic body is an ideal concept only. Most materials which possess elasticity in
practice remain purely elastic only up to very small deformations. In engineering, the amount of
elasticity of a material is determined by two types of material parameter. The first type of
material parameter is called a modulus, which measures the amount of force per unit area needed
to achieve a given amount of deformation. The SI unit of a modulus is the pascal (Pa). A higher
modulus typically indicates that the material is harder to deform. The second type of parameter
measures the elastic limit, the maximum stress that can arise in a material before the onset of
permanent deformation. Its SI unit is also the pascal (Pa).

When describing the relative elasticities of two materials, both the modulus and the elastic limit
have to be considered. Rubbers typically have a low modulus and tend to stretch a lot (that is,
they have a high elastic limit) and so appear more elastic than metals (high modulus and low
elastic limit) in everyday experience.

Contents
 1Overview
 2Linear elasticity
 3Finite elasticity
o 3.1Cauchy elastic materials
o 3.2Hypoelastic materials
o 3.3Hyperelastic materials
 4Applications
 5Factors affecting elasticity
 6See also
 7References

Overview[edit]
When an elastic material is deformed due to an external force, it experiences internal resistance
to the deformation and restores it to its original state if the external force is no longer applied.
There are various elastic moduli, such as Young's modulus, the shear modulus, and the bulk
modulus, all of which are measures of the inherent elastic properties of a material as a resistance
to deformation under an applied load. The various moduli apply to different kinds of
deformation. For instance, Young's modulus applies to extension/compression of a body,
whereas the shear modulus applies to its shear.[1] Young's modulus and shear modulus is only for
solids where bulk modulus is for solid,liquid and gas.

The elasticity of materials is described by a stress–strain curve, which shows the relation
between stress (the average restorative internal force per unit area) and strain (the relative
deformation).[2] The curve is generally nonlinear, but it can (by use of a Taylor series) be
approximated as linear for sufficiently small deformations (in which higher-order terms are
negligible). If the material is isotropic, the linearized stress–strain relationship is called Hooke's
law, which is often presumed to apply up to the elastic limit for most metals or crystalline
materials whereas nonlinear elasticity is generally required to model large deformations of
rubbery materials even in the elastic range. For even higher stresses, materials exhibit plastic
behavior, that is, they deform irreversibly and do not return to their original shape after stress is
no longer applied.[3] For rubber-like materials such as elastomers, the slope of the stress–strain
curve increases with stress, meaning that rubbers progressively become more difficult to stretch,
while for most metals, the gradient decreases at very high stresses, meaning that they
progressively become easier to stretch.[4] Elasticity is not exhibited only by solids; non-
Newtonian fluids, such as viscoelastic fluids, will also exhibit elasticity in certain conditions
quantified by the Deborah number. In response to a small, rapidly applied and removed strain,
these fluids may deform and then return to their original shape. Under larger strains, or strains
applied for longer periods of time, these fluids may start to flow like a viscous liquid.

Because the elasticity of a material is described in terms of a stress–strain relation, it is essential

that the terms stress and strain be defined without ambiguity. Typically, two types of relation are
considered. The first type deals with materials that are elastic only for small strains. The second
deals with materials that are not limited to small strains. Clearly, the second type of relation is
more general in the sense that it must include the first type as a special case.

For small strains, the measure of stress that is used is the Cauchy stress while the measure of
strain that is used is the infinitesimal strain tensor; the resulting (predicted) material behavior is
termed linear elasticity, which (for isotropic media) is called the generalized Hooke's law.
Cauchy elastic materials and hypoelastic materials are models that extend Hooke's law to allow
for the possibility of large rotations, large distortions, and intrinsic or induced anisotropy.

For more general situations, any of a number of stress measures can be used, and it generally
desired (but not required) that the elastic stress–strain relation be phrased in terms of a finite
strain measure that is work conjugate to the selected stress measure, i.e., the time integral of the
inner product of the stress measure with the rate of the strain measure should be equal to the
change in internal energy for any adiabatic process that remains below the elastic limit.

Linear elasticity[edit]
Main article: Linear elasticity

As noted above, for small deformations, most elastic materials such as springs exhibit linear
elasticity and can be described by a linear relation between the stress and strain. This relationship
is known as Hooke's law. A geometry-dependent version of the idea[5] was first formulated by
Robert Hooke in 1675 as a Latin anagram, "ceiiinosssttuv". He published the answer in 1678:
"Ut tensio, sic vis" meaning "As the extension, so the force",[6][7][8] a linear relationship commonly
referred to as Hooke's law. This law can be stated as a relationship between tensile force F and
corresponding extension displacement x,

where k is a constant known as the rate or spring constant. It can also be stated as a relationship

between stress σ and strain :

where E is known as the elastic modulus or Young's modulus.

Although the general proportionality constant between stress and strain in three dimensions is a
4th-order tensor called stiffness, systems that exhibit symmetry, such as a one-dimensional rod,
can often be reduced to applications of Hooke's law.

Finite elasticity[edit]
The elastic behavior of objects that undergo finite deformations has been described using a
number of models, such as Cauchy elastic material models, Hypoelastic material models, and
Hyperelastic material models. The deformation gradient (F) is the primary deformation measure
used in finite strain theory.

Cauchy elastic materials[edit]

Main article: Cauchy elastic material

A material is said to be Cauchy-elastic if the Cauchy stress tensor σ is a function of the

deformation gradient F alone:

It is generally incorrect to state that Cauchy stress is a function of merely a strain tensor, as such
a model lacks crucial information about material rotation needed to produce correct results for an
anisotropic medium subjected to vertical extension in comparison to the same extension applied
horizontally and then subjected to a 90-degree rotation; both these deformations have the same
spatial strain tensors yet must produce different values of the Cauchy stress tensor.

Even though the stress in a Cauchy-elastic material depends only on the state of deformation, the
work done by stresses might depend on the path of deformation. Therefore, Cauchy elasticity
includes non-conservative "non-hyperelastic" models (in which work of deformation is path
dependent) as well as conservative "hyperelastic material" models (for which stress can be
derived from a scalar "elastic potential" function).

Hypoelastic materials[edit]

Main article: Hypoelastic material

A hypoelastic material can be rigorously defined as one that is modeled using a constitutive
equation satisfying the following two criteria:[9]

1. The Cauchy stress at time depends only on the order in which the body has occupied
its past configurations, but not on the time rate at which these past configurations were traversed.
As a special case, this criterion includes a Cauchy elastic material, for which the current stress
depends only on the current configuration rather than the history of past configurations.

2. There is a tensor-valued function such that in which is the material rate of the

Cauchy stress tensor, and is the spatial velocity gradient tensor.

If only these two original criteria are used to define hypoelasticity, then hyperelasticity would be
included as a special case, which prompts some constitutive modelers to append a third criterion
that specifically requires a hypoelastic model to not be hyperelastic (i.e., hypoelasticity implies
that stress is not derivable from an energy potential). If this third criterion is adopted, it follows
that a hypoelastic material might admit nonconservative adiabatic loading paths that start and
end with the same deformation gradient but do not start and end at the same internal energy.

Note that the second criterion requires only that the function exists. As detailed in the main
Hypoelastic material article, specific formulations of hypoelastic models typically employ so-

called objective rates so that the function exists only implicitly and is typically needed
explicitly only for numerical stress updates performed via direct integration of the actual (not
objective) stress rate.

Hyperelastic materials[edit]

Main article: Hyperelastic material

Hyperelastic materials (also called Green elastic materials) are conservative models that are
derived from a strain energy density function (W). A model is hyperelastic if and only if it is
possible to express the Cauchy stress tensor as a function of the deformation gradient via a
relationship of the form

This formulation takes the energy potential (W) as a function of the deformation gradient ( ).
By also requiring satisfaction of material objectivity, the energy potential may be alternatively

regarded as a function of the Cauchy-Green deformation tensor ( ), in which case the

hyperelastic model may be written alternatively as

Applications[edit]
Linear elasticity is used widely in the design and analysis of structures such as beams, plates and
shells, and sandwich composites. This theory is also the basis of much of fracture mechanics.

Hyperelasticity is primarily used to determine the response of elastomer-based objects such as

gaskets and of biological materials such as soft tissues and cell membranes.

Factors affecting elasticity[edit]

For isotropic materials, the presence of fractures affects the Young and the shear moduli
perpendicular to the planes of the cracks, which decrease (Young's modulus faster than the shear
modulus) as the fracture density increases,[10] indicating that the presence of cracks makes bodies
brittler. Microscopically, the stress–strain relationship of materials is in general governed by the
Helmholtz free energy, a thermodynamic quantity. Molecules settle in the configuration which
minimizes the free energy, subject to constraints derived from their structure, and, depending on
whether the energy or the entropy term dominates the free energy, materials can broadly be
classified as energy-elastic and entropy-elastic. As such, microscopic factors affecting the free
energy, such as the equilibrium distance between molecules, can affect the elasticity of materials:
for instance, in inorganic materials, as the equilibrium distance between molecules at 0 K
increases, the bulk modulus decreases.[11] The effect of temperature on elasticity is difficult to
isolate, because there are numerous factors affecting it. For instance, the bulk modulus of a
material is dependent on the form of its lattice, its behavior under expansion, as well as the
vibrations of the molecules, all of which are dependent on temperature.[12]