Continuum Mechanics Background

This chapter summarizes the basic relation needed to formulate the deformation of solids in the linear and nonlinear range. It is subdivided into the sections kinematics, balance laws, variational formulations and constitutive equations. This part of the book is not meant for studying continuum mechanics, it only summarizes results that provide essential background and notation for understanding the discretization techniques related to the virtual element method in the following chapters.