Shear stress, or shearing stress is a stress that acts tangential (coplanar) to a face of a material. This is as opposed to normal stress which acts perpendicular to a surface.
The average shear stress is force per unit area, and can be calculated as:
where:
τ = Shear stress;
F = Applied force;
A = The cross-sectional area of material coplanar to the applied force
This page is part of The Encyclopedia of Stresses in Solids