The order of a damage tensor

In this paper, the stress deformation constitutive relations for continua are discussed and a stress deformation constitutive relation expressed by functional tensorial expression is found. When we study the anisotropic damage of anisotropic materials either from a macroscopic continuum mechanics model or from a microdefect model, there exists a limit to the order of a damage tensor, and the condition under which the damage variable may be described by a tensor lower than those of the highest order is found.