Why Poisson’s Ratio Cannot be Greater than 0.5

Theoretically the Poisson ratio should be in between -1 and 0.5 because of the following requirement :

the modulus of elasticity (E ), modulus of rigidity (G), and bulk modulus must be positive

Now remember the following basic relations of physics :

G=E/(2(1+n))………1

K=E/(3(1-2n))……..2

where,
n – Poisson’s ratio

now from the equation1 it can be seen that the value of poisson ratio cannot be smaller than -1 in order to keep G positive.

Similarly from the equation2 it can be concluded that the value of the Poisson’s ratio (n) cannot be greater than 0.5 to keep the bulk modulus (K) positive.

Although, the theoretical range for the Poisson ratio is negative one to 0.5, but practically, the value of it lies between zero and 0.5 only.

Shibashis Ghosh

Hi, I am Shibashis, a blogger by passion and an engineer by profession. I have written most of the articles for mechGuru.com. For more than a decades i am closely associated with the engineering design/manufacturing simulation technologies. I am a self taught code hobbyist, presently in love with Python (Open CV / ML / Data Science /AWS -3000+ lines, 400+ hrs. )

This Post Has One Comment

  1. kyle

    not much of a proof….

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