Commonly used orthogonal coordinate systems
Cartesian coordinate
- orthogonal, no singularity point
Cylindrical polar coordinates
- orthogonal, singularity at
Sperical polar coordinates
orthogonal, singularity at
or
To verify orthogonality:
-
, which is the are contravariant derivatives, usually written as
- If given
,
, which are the covariant derivatives, usually written as
- The concept of a metric tensor:
the metric tensor being diagonal is equivalent to the unit vectors being orthogonal, also
Vector calculus in orthogonal coordinates
Notice that
both by the vector identity
We finally retrieve the grad and curl of vector fields in curvilinear coordinates
To calculate the Laplacian of a vector field, the difficulty lies in the non-constant unit vectors in general coordinates, please resolve to the following vector identity.