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Sia Nemat-Nasser's blog

On the nature of the Cauchy stress tensor

Submitted by Sia Nemat-Nasser on

Checking the iMechanica web, I notice some discussion about the Cauchy stress tensor, whether it is covariant or contravariant.  Well, a tensor is neither covariant nor contravariant, while it can be expressed by its covariant, contravariant, or mixed *components* with respect to any arbitrary coordinate system. See the attached short explanation.