
This is a first year graduate textbook in Linear Elasticity. The ?rst edition of this book, published in 1992, was based on a one semester graduate course on Linear Elasticity that I have taught at the U- versity of Michigan since 1983. My engineering background will also reveal itself in a tendency to work examples through to ?nal expressions for stresses and displacements, rather than leave the derivation at a point where the remaining manipulations would be mathematically routine. This way of thinking will be found to permeate this book. Today, with a rather more extensive knowledge of analytical techniques in Elasticity, I still ?nd it helpful to go back to these roots in the elementary theory and think through a problem physically as well as mathematically, whenever some new and unexpected feature presents di?culties in research. As a practising Engineer with a background only in elementary Mechanics of - terials, I approached that problem initially using the concepts of concentrated forces and superposition.


My ?rst introduction to the subject was in response to a need for information about a speci?c problem in Tribology.

The subject of Elasticity can be approached from several points of view, - pending on whether the practitioner is principally interested in the mat- matical structure of the subject or in its use in engineering applications and, in the latter case, whether essentially numerical or analytical methods are envisaged as the solution method.
