which, upon factoring the left-hand side and dividing by (dX)2, becomes

But dXi /dX = Ni, a unit vector in the direction of dX, and for small
deformations
we may assume (dx + dX)/dX 2, so that
(4.7-9)
The scalar ratio on the left-hand side of this equation is clearly the
change
in length per unit original length for the element in the direction of . It
is known as the longitudinal strain, or the normal strain and we denote
it by
. If, for example, is taken in the X1 direction so that , then
Likewise, for , or the normal strains are found to be 22 and
33, respectively. Thus, the diagonal elements of the small
(infinitesimal)
strain tensor represent normal strains in the coordinate directions.
To gain an insight into the physical meaning of the off-diagonal
elements
of the infinitesimal strain tensor we consider differential vectors dX(1)
and
dX(2) at position P which are deformed into vectors dx(1) and dx(2),
respectively.
In this case, Eq 4.6-19 may be written,
dx(1) dx(2) = dX(1) dX(2) + dX(1) 2dX(2)