Strain rate tensor

In continuum mechanics, the strain rate tensor is a physical quantity that describes the rate of change of
the deformation of a material in the neighborhood of a certain point, at a certain moment of time. It can be
defined as the derivative of the strain tensor with respect to time, or as the symmetric component of the
gradient (derivative with respect to position) of theflow velocity.

The strain rate tensor is a purely kinematic concept that describes the macroscopic motion of the material.
Therefore, it does not depend on the nature of the material, or on the forces and stresses that may be acting
on it; and it applies to anycontinuous medium, whether solid, liquid or gas.

On the other hand, for any fluid except superfluids, any gradual change in its deformation (i.e. a non-zero
strain rate tensor) gives rise to viscous forces in its interior, due to friction between adjacent fluid elements,
that tend to oppose that change. At any point in the fluid, these stresses can be described by a viscous stress A two-dimensional flow that, at
tensor that is, almost always, completely determined by the strain rate tensor and by certain intrinsic the highlighted point, has only a
strain rate component, with no
properties of the fluid at that point. Viscous stress also occur in solids, in addition to the elastic stress
mean velocity or rotational
observed in static deformation; when it is too large to be ignored, the material is said to beviscoelastic.
component.

Contents
1 Definition
1.1 Symmetric and antisymmetric parts
1.2 Shear rate and compression rate
2 See also
3 References

Definition
Consider a material body, solid or fluid, that is flowing and/or moving in space. Let v be the velocity field within the body; that is, a smooth function
from 3 such that v(p,t) is the macroscopic velocity of the material that is passing through the pointp at time t.

The velocity v(p + r,t) at a point displaced fromp by a small vector r can be written as a Taylor series:

where v the gradient of the velocity field, understood as alinear map that takes a displacement vectorr to the corresponding change in the velocity.

Total field v(p + r). Constant part v(p). Linear part (v)(p,t)(r). Non-linear residual.
The velocity field v(p + r,t) of an arbitrary flow around a pointp (red dot), at some instantt, and the
terms of its first-order Taylor approximation about p. The third component of the velocity (out of the
screen) is assumed to be zero everywhere.

In an arbitrary reference frame, v is related to the Jacobian matrix of the field, namely in 3 dimensions it is the 3 3 matrix
where vi is the component of v parallel to axis i and jf denotes the partial derivative of a function f with respect to the space coordinate xj. Note that J
is a function of p and t.

In this coordinate system, the Taylor approximation for the velocity nearp is

or simply

if v and r are viewed as 3 1 matrices.

Symmetric and antisymmetric parts

Any matrix can be decomposed into the sum of a symmetric matrix and an antisymmetric matrix. Applying this to
the Jacobian matrix J = (v)T with symmetric and antisymmetric componentsE and R respectively:

That is,

The symmetric part

E(p,t)(r) (strain rate) of
This decomposition is independent of coordinate system, and so has physical significance. Then the velocity field
the linear term of the
may be approximated as example flow.

that is,

The antisymmetric part

R(p,t)(r) (rotation) of
the linear term.

The antisymmetric termR represents a rigid-like rotation of the fluid about the pointp. Its angular velocity is
The product v is called the rotational curl of the vector field. A rigid rotation does not change the relative positions of the fluid elements, so the
antisymmetric term R of the velocity gradient does not contribute to the rate of change of the deformation. The actual strain rate is therefore described
by the symmetric E term, which is the strain rate tensor.

Shear rate and compression rate

The symmetric term E of velocity gradient (the rate-of-strain tensor) can be broken down further as the sum of a
scalar times the unit tensor, that represents a gradual isotropic expansion or contraction; and a traceless symmetric
[1]
tensor which represents a gradual shearing deformation, with no change in volume:

That is,

The scalar part

D(p,t)(r) (uniform
expansion/compression
rate) of the strain rate
tensor E(p,t)(r).

Here is the unit tensor, such that ij is 1 if i = j and 0 if i j. This decomposition is independent of the choice of
coordinate system, and is therefore physically significant.

The expansion rate tensor is 13 of the divergence of the velocity field:

which is the rate at which the volume of a fixed amount of fluid increases at that point. The traceless part
S(p,t)(r) (shear rate) of
The shear rate tensor is represented by a symmetric 3 3 matrix, and describes a flow that combines compression the strain rate tensor
and expansion flows along three orthogonal axes, such that there is no change in volume. This type of flow occurs, E(p,t)(r).
for example, when a rubber strip is stretched by pulling at the ends, or when honey falls from a spoon as a smooth
unbroken stream.

For a two-dimensional flow, the divergence of v has only two terms and quantifies the change in area rather than volume. The factor 1/3 in the
expansion rate term should be replaced by12 in that case.

See also
Stress tensor (disambiguation)

References
1. Landau, L. D.; Lifshitz, E. M. (1997).Fluid Mechanics. Translated by Sykes, J. B.; Reid, W. H. (2nd ed.). Butterworth Heinemann.
ISBN 0-7506-2767-0.

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