Past exam of the solid mechanics course of the University of Oxford / 2011 / 2 / b / Solution

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 isIt measures force per reference area, with a current force direction and a reference normal direction.

In components, differentiate $T_{iA}=S_{ij}(y(x))(\mathrm{cof}F{)}_{jA}$. The Piola identity says ${\partial }_A(\mathrm{cof}Dy{)}_{jA}=0$. One proof writes the cofactor matrix as $\frac{1}{2}{\epsilon }_{jkl}{\epsilon }_{ABC}{y}_{k,B}{y}_{l,C}$; differentiating in $A$ produces symmetric second derivatives contracted against antisymmetric epsilon symbols, hence zero. The chain rule consequently givessince $F_{kA}(\mathrm{cof}F{)}_{jA}=J{\delta }_{kj}$. Thus, with the coordinate composition made explicit,The distinction between reference divergence and current divergence is essential to this identity.