Gauge kinematics of deformable bodies
Alfred D. Shapere, Frank A. Wilczek · American Journal of Physics · 1989
The treatment of the motion of deformable bodies requires a specification of axes for each shape. A natural kinematic formulation of this problem is presented in terms of a gauge structure over the space of shapes that the body may assume. Within this framework, one may compute the net change in orientation of a body with angular momentum zero, resulting from a given sequence of deformations.