Some anomalies of the curved bar problem in classical elasticity

Abstract

The classical formulation of the ‘homogeneous’ problem of a curved bar loaded only by and end force involves the assumption of an appropriate stress function with four arbitrary constants and the determination of these constants from the boundary conditions. Since there are five boundary conditions, four on the curved edge and one at the end, the solution is only possible because the coefficient matrix of the resulting algebraic equations is singular. This in turn means that certain inhomogeneous problems in which the curved edges are loaded by sinusoidally varying tractions cannot be solved using apparently appropriate stress functions.