Curvilinear coordinates

Curvilinear coordinates are a coordinate system based on some transformation of the standard coordinate system, such that the transformation is locally invertible at each point. This means that we can convert a point given in one coordinate system to its curvilinear coordinates and back at will. This is useful in that working with the curvilinear coordinate system in one situation may be more simple than in the Cartesian coordinate system.This also has consequences that we can express many of the concepts in vector calculus which are given in Cartesian or spherical coordinates or any other arbitrary coordinate system, also in curvilinear coordinates.

Table of contents

1 Terminology 1.1 Example 2 Line, surface, and volume integrals 2.2 Line integrals 2.3 Surface integrals 3 Div, curl, grad

Terminology

In R³, for example, if we have some transformation

giving curvilinear coordinates x₁′, x₂′,x₃′, for x₁, x₂, x₃, if this transformation is locally invertible everywhere, the Jacobian determinant

is nonzero, and for this to happen, the vectors

must form a basis for R³.

From these basis vectors, we define scale factors

and thusly arrive at the unit basis vectors for the curvilinear coordinates to be

Note that the coordinate system we choose need not be orthogonal, but for the purposes of this article, they are treated as being so. The system is orthogonal iff

where δ_ij is the Kronecker delta.

Example

If we consider polar coordinates for R², note that

(r, θ) are the curvilinear coordinates, and the Jacobian determinant of the transformation (r,θ) → (r cos θ, r sin θ) is r.

The basis vectors are b_r = (cos θ, sin θ), b_θ = (-r sin θ, r cos θ), with unit basis vectors e_r = (cos θ, sin θ), e_θ = (- sin θ, cos θ) with scale factors h_r = 1 and h_θ= r.

Line, surface, and volume integrals

Since we use curvilinear coordinates to aid in the calculation in vector calculus, there are adjustments we need to make in the calculation of line, surface and volume integrals.

Line integrals

Normally in the calculation of line integrals we are interested in calculating

where x(t) parametrizes C in Cartesian coordinates. In curvilinear coordinates, the term

by the chain rule. But from the definition of the curvilinear coordinates,

and thus

and we can proceed normally.

Surface integrals

Likewise, if we are interested in a surface integral, the relevant calculation, with the parametrisation of the surface in Cartesian coordinates is:

Again, in curvilinear coordinates, the term

and we make use of the definition of curvilinear coordinates again to yield

and

where the cross product, in terms of curvilinear coordinates, will be:

Div, curl, grad

In curvilinear coordinates, we can express the divergence, curl and gradient of a function or vector field as follows: