Another quantity widely used in the kinematic description of bodies is the difference between the current position and the reference position of the generic point
known as displacement field. The relative gradient, known as displacement gradient and indicated with the symbol \(\tens{\nabla u}\text{,}\) is obtained in a similar way to what has already been done for the deformation gradient. Given the field
evaluation of the displacement field and its gradient.
With regard to the Transformation 1 already used in the previous examples, the displacement field and its gradient can be evaluated on the basis of the following MATLAB® instructions. Bear in mind that, for the linearity of the transformations involved, the gradients are evaluated as the matrix associated to the transformation.