Direction Cosines

In Fig. 1.lb ABC is an oblique plane cutting the volume element to produce the tetrahedron
OABC. On the front three faces of the element in Fig. 1.1 a the stress components act in the
positive co-ordinate directions. Negative directions apply to the back three orthogonal faces
in Fig. 1.1b . It is required to find, for Fig. 1.1b , the stress state (0t, ) on the front triangular
face ABC in both magnitude and direction. To do this it becomes necessary to find the areas
of each back face. In Fig. 1.2a, we let the area ABC be unity and construct CD perpendicular
to AB and join OD. The normal vector N to plane ABC is defined by the direction cosines
I, m and n with respect to x, y and z,