The surface element relation is Nanson's formula. The force on a corresponding pair of current and reference surface elements must agree:
Therefore the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor is
It measures force per reference area, with a current force direction and a reference normal direction.
In components, differentiate . The Piola identity says . One proof writes the cofactor matrix as ; differentiating in produces symmetric second derivatives contracted against antisymmetric epsilon symbols, hence zero. The chain rule consequently gives
since . Thus, with the coordinate composition made explicit,
The distinction between reference divergence and current divergence is essential to this identity.

Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.