Summary of Rules for Working With Indices

1. Indices are represented by lower-case subscripts, and are considered to take the values 1, 2
and 3 unless otherwise agreed.

2. Repeated (dummy) indices are summed over the range of values of the indices.

3. Indices imply tensor transformation of the components. The rank of the tensor is the
number of indices.

4. A tensor may be contracted on two indices by setting them equal and summing. The result
is also a tensor.

5. The Kronecker Delta ij is equal to 1 if the indices are equal, 0 otherwise.

6. The antisymmetric tensor density ijk is +1 if ijk is an even permutation of 123, -1 if an odd
permutation, and 0 otherwise.

Consider the cross product of two vectors u and v that gives a third vector w. Using index
notation and base vectors we may write the cross product of u and v as:

We know that the that cross product of the basis vectors may be written using the
permutation tensor as:
 to see the above result, consider some examples and compare them to the results we
obtained by directly writing the cross product of the base vectors:

Note the any choice for k, except for k = 3, will result in the permutation tensor being
zero, due to a repeat of either the i or j index. That is why only k = 3 is shown.

We can then write the general cross product as:

The ability to calculate vector dot and cross products is especially useful in continuum
mechanics for calculating areas and volumes. This will be especially important when we
consider nonlinear large deformation of soft tissues, because we will need to calculate the areas
and volumes for defining quantities in initial and current deformed configurations.

Consider the area represented by two vectors. Graphically, we can describe the area as:

where the dark area represents the area associated with the two vectors.

We can also calculate the area covered in dark between the two vectors using the norm, or
magnitude, of the cross product between the vectors. This can be written as:
where the | | symbol indicates the norm of the vector that results from the cross product.
Basically, if we denote the resulting cross product vector as w, then the norm of this vector is
obtained by simply squaring each vector component, adding the squares together, and taking the
square root of the sum:

if we write this out explicitly in terms of the cross product components we obtain:

To test this idea out, let's consider two vectors in a plane with the following components:

The two vectors above represent one vector of length 1 rotated 45 degrees counterclockwise
from the x axis (u) and one vector of length 1 rotated 45 degrees counterclockwise from the y
axis, as illustrated below:

We know intuitively that since each vector has a length of one, that total area should be one. Let
us now do the calculation using the cross product equation given above:
as expected, the calculation also gives an area of 1. Likewise, we can write the area represented
using two vectors using index notation and the permutation tensor as:

Another very useful calculation that can actually be done using a combination of the cross
product with the dot product is that of a volume. Consider the volume formed by the three
vectors u, v, and w as shown below:

The area of the base of the volume can directly be written as u x v. We then need to only multiply
the base area by the height represented by the vector w to obtain the volume in which we are
interested. The volume can be written symbolically as:
Now let us write the above symbolic equation for volume in terms of index notation:

Note that all the indices are repeated, and that there are no independent indices. This means the
following according to our index rule. First, since there are no repeated indices, this means that
we raise the dimension to the 0th power, by index rule #2:

The number 1 indicates that the entity resulting from the operation produced by the indices will
make a scalar. The number of summed quantitites for the scalar is equal to the dimension raised
to the total number of repeated indices, which is in this case 3, according to index rule 1.

However, if we consider the permutation tensor, only six of the 27 quantities will be non-zero.
That is, there are only six permutations of 1,2, and 3 that will not repeat, namely 123, 132, 213,
231, 321, 312. If we therefore permute i,j, and k through 1,2,3 as in the preceding sentence, we
will get the following representation for a volume based on the index equation above:
We have now considered the representation of vectors using index notation and some of the main
operations with vectors, namely dot and cross products, that are relevant to solid mechanics.
Vectors are of course and integral feature of solid mechanics, being used to represent quantities
like position, displacement, velocity and acceleration. However, there are other quantities like
stress, strain, and stiffness that cannot be represented by vectors, but rather by tensors.
Furthermore, there are operations on vectors that will actually produce tensors. The next section
will provide a basic overview of tensors, what they represent and what mathematical operations
may be performed using tensors.

7. The determinant of aij is a = ijka1ia2ja3k.

8. ijkirs = jrks - jskr.

9. The transformation xi' = aijxj with inverse xi = a-1ijxj' is a rotation or rotary inversion if a-1ij =
aji, and aijaik = ajiaki = jk. The matrix aij is called orthogonal, and its determinant is 1 for a
rotation, -1 for a rotary inversion.
 (The property may be proved by first proving the generalization

Both sides clearly vanish if any of i, j, k are equal; or if any of l, m, n are. Now take
i = l = 1, j = m = 2, k = n = 3: both sides are clearly 1. Finally consider the effect
of swapping say i and j. Once we have proved this generalization, contract k and n and
simplify, noting that for example jk km = jm .)

Example: prove that

a (b c) = (a . c)b (a .

b)c.

[a (b c)]i = Eijk aj [b c]k

= Eijk aj Eklm bl cm

= (il jm im jl )aj bl cm

= aj bi cj aj bj ci

= (a . c)bi (a . b)ci

= [(a . c)b (a . b)c]i ,

as required.

Eijk can also be used to calculate determinants. The determinant of a 3 3 matrix

A = (aij ) is given by Eijk a1i a2j a3k (check this by just expanding the product and sum in
full. This can be written in other ways.

This proves that swapping two rows of a matrix changes the sign of the
determinant.