Fundamental Notions from Classical Continuum Mechanics

Understanding the basic concepts of continuum mechanics is very important when attempting to describe the materials behaviour that completely fill the occupied space. With the rapid development of science and technology, continuum mechanics has found significant applications in almost all cutting-edge research activities. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to fundamental concepts of continuum mechanics. The deformation of a continuum can be described by three types of mathematical relationships, i.e., kinematic, kinetic and constitutive equations. We will discuss these types of equations separately. First, a brief review of the kinematic equations, strain tensor and its properties is given.