
A.6 Tensors in Cartesian Coordinates 333
A.6 Tensors in Cartesian Coordinates
In fluid mechanics, as indeed in most branches of physics, we are dealing with fun-
damental quantities in space that have properties such as magnitude and direction.
Familiar examples are scalars (e.g., density that has magnitude but no direction), vectors
(e.g., velocity that has magnitude and direction) and more general quantities (e.g., stress
that has magnitude and two directions, one for the force and the second for orientation
of the area). The generic term that contains all of these categories is a tensor. Thus, a
scalar is a tensor of order zero, a vector is a tensor of order one, and stress is a tensor
of order two. The order of a tensor refers to the number of directions that we associate
with the physical quantity. While any order is possible, tensors of order greater than
two are rare and usually arise as the derivatives of lower-order tensors.
Tensors are written in the following fashion:
=zero order tensor (A.6.1)
v = v
i
g
i
(first order tensor) (A.6.2)
=
ij
g
i
g
j
(second order tensor) (A.6.3)
For the second-order tensor, we have two base vectors, one for each direction, and
they appear naturally as a product in the right-hand side. (Notice that the appearance
of two dummy indices means that there are two summations present, one on i and one
on j.) Since we have not put a dot or a cross between the two base vectors, the product is
neither a dot product nor a cross product but rather an indefinite product. (It’s not really
indefinite because we know what the two directions mean. The terminology here is just
to identify this new type of product as having a name different from the other two.)
In dealing with tensors of any order, it is convenient to deal with just the compo-
nents. A test to determine whether a set of quantities are in fact the components of a
tensor is to observe how these quantities transform as we rotate axes. (Note: A funda-
mental point that is all too easily forgotten in learning tensor analysis is that the tensor
itself does not change as we rotate the coordinate axes, only the components of the
tensor change, since they, and not the tensor itself, are axis-related.) To see this, at a
point in space introduce two Cartesian coordinate systems, x and y, one being obtained
from the other by a rigid rotation of axes. Then y
i
=a
ij
x
j
, and
x
j
y
i
=
y
i
y
i
=a
ij
=a
ji
=g
i
y ·g
j
x (A.6.4)
where the a
ij
are the direction cosines of one set of axes with respect to the other, and
the letters in parentheses following the unit base vectors tell the reference frame they
refer to. By virtue of the orthogonality of the axes,
g
i
y ·g
j
y = g
i
x ·g
j
x =
ij
(A.6.5)
By the Pythagorean theorem, and the fact that the angle between the axes x
i
and y
k
are
the same,
a
ik
a
jk
=a
ki
a
kj
=
ij
(A.6.6)
Since any tensor T must be independent of the choice of axes, then Ty =Tx, where
Ty means the tensor quantity T referred to the y axes and similarly for T(x).By
equation (A.6.4) the base vectors transform according to
g
i
y =a
ij
g
j
x (A.6.7)