Consistency checks on elastic properties of crystals

Several methods are available for the determination of the bulk modulus of solids and single crystal elastic constants. Although high accuracy is claimed, cases exist where the values of the elastic properties reported by different workers using different or same methods show differences far beyond the claimed limits of experimental errors. More than two dozen cases are cited where the differences in the reported values of the bulk moduli are of the order of 20% or more; in some cases the differences are as much as a factor of 3–5. Similarly, nearly a dozen cases are cited where the single crystal elastic constants of a crystal from different sources differ by about 20% or more and in some cases by a factor of 3–15; in fact there are cases where the reported elastic constants even differ in sign. This paper discusses a number of consistency checks for elastic properties of solids which help in sifting acceptable values from out of a wide range of reported values.Professor Emeritus