Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm wondering is there any way to
decompose the deformation of an object into different
components? For example, into stretching, bending and twisting
part respectively? The decomposition could be applied to any
description of deformation, either to deformation gradient
tensor, strain tensor or stress tensor.  To my knowledge, there
is some literature using the decomposition of deformation
gradient tensor into rotation and deformation part. But what I
want is to further decompose the deformation, leave away the
rigid transformation like translating and rotating.
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down vote accepted  There is no unique way to "further
decompose" the deformation into the "rigid transformation" and
"others" because whatever "rigid part" you choose, you may
always calculate "others" as a simple difference (that's because
there's really no global constraint on the "other" part). So the
"rigid part" may be anything you want.  share|improve this