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Encyclopedia entry: stress analysis
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to the Earth
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to the Earth 2000, originally published by Oxford University Press 2000. (Hide copyright information)
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stress analysis
Stress analysis is the process used to estimate the distribution of forces throughout a mass of material. In the geosciences, stress analysis can be used to ascertain whether a material is approaching, or has reached, a state of limiting equilibrium (or failure); if the appropriate stress– strain relationships are known, it can also be used to calculate the resulting deformations. Calculations of this kind are vital in many areas of engineering geology.
A stress is a force divided by the area over which it acts. If, for example, a vertical cylinder of rock, with a horizontal cross-sectional area
a
, is subjected to a vertical compressive force
N
, which will tend to ...