Advanced elasticity/Curvature

It helps to a know a bit about curvature when you start learning how to do buckling analysis. The following discussion goes through the derivation of some useful elementary results relating to curvature. You have already learned these in your introductory calculus course. However, you may have forgotten the details. So this is a refresher lesson.

Tangent vector to a curve

edit

Let   be a vector valued function (curve) of the parameter  . The unit tangent vector to the curve traced by the function   is given by

 

Note that the "velocity" of a point on the curve is in the direction of the tangent. Therefore, the unit tangent vector and the unit velocity vector have the same value

 

A straight line has the equation

 

Taking the derivative with respect to   we see that the tangent vector is constant, i.e., it does not change direction. Alternatively, we may say that the condition   implies that the unit tangent vector does not change direction.

If the curve is not a straight line, then the quantity   measures the tendency of the curve to change direction.

Normal vector to a curve

edit

The unit normal to the curve is defined as

 

Curvature vector of a curve

edit

The curvature vector is defined as the rate of change of the unit tangent vector with respect to the arc length. If   measures the arc length, then the curvature vector is given by  . Now, the "velocity" is given by

 

Then

 

Therefore the curvature vector has the same direction at the unit normal vector.

Curvature

edit

The curvature ( ) of the curve is the length of the curvature vector. That means,

 

Radius of curvature

edit

To get a feel for the radius of curvature, consider the equation of a circle

 

where   is the radius of the circle and   are the unit basis vectors in the   directions. Then the "velocity" is given by

 

and the unit tangent vector is

 

Differentiating with respect to  ,

 

Therefore, the curvature of the circle is

 

This shows that the radius of the circle is the reciprocal of the curvature of the circle. The radius of curvature of any curve is defined in an analogous manner as the reciprocal of the curvature of the curve at a point.

Curvature of plane curves

edit

Let us now consider a curve in a plane  . Let   be the angle that the tangent vector to the curve makes with the positive  -axis. Then we can write

 

where   are the unit basis vectors in the   directions.

Taking the derivative we have

 

Therefore

 

Using the chain rule

 

The curvature can then be expressed as

 

Useful relation for the curvature of plane curves

edit

If the plane curve is parameterized as

 

the curvature of curve can also be expressed as

 

If, in addition,  , we have

Curvature of a plane curve

 

Proof: The tangent vector to the curve is given by

 

Therefore

 

Differentiating both sides with respect to  ,

 

Now,

 

Plugging (2) back into (1) we get

 

The curvature is given by

 

Also

 

since

 

Plugging (3) and (5) into (4) gives

 

For the situation where   we can parameterize the curve using   to get  . Then,

 

Bibliography

edit
  • Varberg and Parcell, Calculus, 7th edition, Prentice Hall, 1997.
  • Apostol, T. M., Calculus Vol. I, 2nd edition, Wiley, 1967.