Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a continuous medium (also called a continuum) rather than as discrete particles.

Continuum mechanics deals with deformable bodies, as opposed to rigid bodies. A continuum model assumes that the substance of the object completely fills the space it occupies. While ignoring the fact that matter is made of atoms, this provides a sufficiently accurate description of matter on length scales much greater than that of inter-atomic distances. The concept of a continuous medium allows for intuitive analysis of bulk matter by using differential equations that describe the behavior of such matter according to physical laws, such as mass conservation, momentum conservation, and energy conservation. Information about the specific material is expressed in constitutive relationships.

Continuum mechanics treats the physical properties of solids and fluids independently of any particular coordinate system in which they are observed. These properties are represented by tensors, which are mathematical objects with the salient property of being independent of coordinate systems. This permits definition of physical properties at any point in the continuum, according to mathematically convenient continuous functions. The theories of elasticity, plasticity and fluid mechanics are based on the concepts of continuum mechanics.

The concept of a continuum underlies the mathematical framework for studying large-scale forces and deformations in materials. Although materials are composed of discrete atoms and molecules, separated by empty space or microscopic cracks and crystallographic defects, physical phenomena can often be modeled by considering a substance distributed throughout some region of space. A continuum is a body that can be continually sub-divided into infinitesimal elements with local material properties defined at any particular point. Properties of the bulk material can therefore be described by continuous functions, and their evolution can be studied using the mathematics of calculus.

Apart from the assumption of continuity, two other independent assumptions are often employed in the study of continuum mechanics. These are homogeneity (assumption of identical properties at all locations) and isotropy (assumption of directionally invariant vector properties). If these auxiliary assumptions are not globally applicable, the material may be segregated into sections where they are applicable in order to simplify the analysis. For more complex cases, one or both of these assumptions can be dropped. In these cases, computational methods are often used to solve the differential equations describing the evolution of material properties.

An additional area of continuum mechanics comprises elastomeric foams, which exhibit a curious hyperbolic stress-strain relationship. The elastomer is a true continuum, but a homogeneous distribution of voids gives it unusual properties.

Continuum mechanics models begin by assigning a region in three-dimensional Euclidean space to the material body ${\displaystyle {\mathcal {B}}}$ being modeled. The points within this region are called particles or material points. Different configurations or states of the body correspond to different regions in Euclidean space. The region corresponding to the body's configuration at time ${\displaystyle t}$ is labeled ${\displaystyle \kappa _{t}({\mathcal {B}})}$.

A particular particle within the body in a particular configuration is characterized by a position vector