On the spectral analysis of residual stress in finite elasticity

In the literature, residual stress problems are generally formulated using classical invariants despite most of them having an unclear physical meaning and not having experimental advantages. In this article, we give an alternative formulation for residual stress problems using a set of spectral invariants. These invariants have a clear physical meaning which may facilitate the design of a residual stress experiment. For the case of an energy function that depends on the right Cauchy tensor and the residual stress tensor, we show that only nine of the classical invariants are independent, not 10 as commonly assumed. Details of the spectral formulation are given and several boundary value problems are illustrated.