Stress and Hyperstress as Fundamental Concepts in Continuum Mechanics and in Relativistic Field Theory

The notions of stress and hyperstress are anchored in 3-dimensional continuum mechanics. Within the framework of the 4-dimensional spacetime continuum, stress and hyperstress translate into the energy-momentum and the hypermomentum current, respectively. These currents describe the inertial properties of classical matter fields in relativistic field theory. The hypermomentum current can be split into spin, dilation, and shear current. We discuss the conservation laws of momentum and hypermomentum and point out under which conditions the momentum current becomes symmetric.