Strain Rates and Material Spins

The material time rate of Lagrangean strain measures, objective corotational rates of Eulerian strain measures and their defining spin tensors are investigated from a general point of view. First, a direct and rigorous method is used to derive a simple formula for the gradient of the tensor-valued function defining a general class of strain measures. By means of this formula and the chain rule as well as Sylvester's formula for eigenprojections, explicit basis-free expressions for the material time rate of an arbitrary Lagrangean strain measure can be derived in terms of the right Cauchy–Green tensor and the material time rate of any chosen Lagrangean strain measure, e.g. Hencky's logarithmic strain measure. These results provide a new derivation of Carlson–Hoger's general gradient formula for an arbitrary generalized strain measure and supply a new, rigorous proof for Carlson–Hoger's conjecture concerning the n-dimensional case. Next, by virtue of the aforementioned gradient formula, a general fact for objective corotational rates and their defining spin tensors is disclosed: Let Ω = ϒ ( B, D, W) be any spin tensor that is continuous with respect to B, where B, D and B are the left Cauchy–Green tensor, the stretching tensor and the vorticity tensor. Then the corotational rate of an Eulerian strain measure defined by Ω is objective iff Ω = W + υ ( B, D), where Υ is isotropic. By means of this fact and certain necessary or reasonable requirements, it is further found that a single antisymmetric function of two positive real variables can be introduced to characterize a general class of spin tensors defining objective corotational rates. A general basis- free expression for all such spin tensors and accordingly a general basis-free expression for a general class of objective corotational rates of an arbitrary Eulerian strain measure are established in terms of the left Cauchy–Green tensor B and the stretching tensor B as well as the introduced antisymmetric function. By choosing several particular forms of the latter, all commonly-known spin tensors and corresponding corotational rates are shown to be incorporated into these general formulas in a natural way. In particular, with the aid of these general formulae it is proved that an objective corotational rate of the Eulerian logarithmic strain measure ln V is identical with the stretching tensor D and moreover that in all possible strain tensor measures only ln V enjoys this property. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.