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On the sign of shear stresses in the Mohr's circle

Submitted by Faustino Mujika on

Usually, the position of points in Mohr's circle is attributed to a sign convetion related to shear stresses. It is shown that points in the circle related to shear stresses generating a clockwise moment are in the upper half of the circle as a consequence of the position of principal directions, not due to a convention. I hope this note could help to explain better the use of Mohr's circle in plane stress states.

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mohr_circle.pdf 68.78 KB