A note on the form of the shear coefficient

an earlier paper, it was noted that the expressions derived for the shear stiffness coefficients for various cross-sectional shapes all had a common general form. It was found that Poisson’s ratio always appeared to be encapsulated within a simple rational function. This led to the conjecture that this would prove to be true in general. New results obtained by different means have supported this conjecture, and have lead to a re-examination of the theory, yielding a proof which is valid for simply-connected cross-sections. Q 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.