Continuum mechanicsContinuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a continuous mass rather than as discrete particles. The French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy was the first to formulate such models in the 19th century. A continuum model assumes that the substance of the object completely fills the space it occupies. This ignores the fact that matter is made of atoms, however provides a sufficiently accurate description of matter on length scales much greater than that of inter-atomic distances.
Orthogonal coordinatesIn mathematics, orthogonal coordinates are defined as a set of d coordinates in which the coordinate hypersurfaces all meet at right angles (note that superscripts are indices, not exponents). A coordinate surface for a particular coordinate qk is the curve, surface, or hypersurface on which qk is a constant. For example, the three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates (x, y, z) is an orthogonal coordinate system, since its coordinate surfaces x = constant, y = constant, and z = constant are planes that meet at right angles to one another, i.
