General Relativity and continuum mechanics

[niahl]

Hello! I started learning relativity recently and I'm an engineering student. I can't stop drawing similarities between the nature of gravity and behaviour of continuous media in the field of continuum mechanics. Is there some direct connection and if so, has something like this been explored already?

 

[WannabeNewton]

Yes but there are a variety of heuristic connections between continuum mechanics and GR and they are different in spirit and strength. If you want specifics then you yourself will have to be more specific on what aspects of GR you would like to see connected to continuum mechanics.

At the most fundamental level one has the following classic results by Jacobson:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04753.pdf
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9504004v2.pdf

Granted, the first paper is more of a relationship between GR and information theory than it is continuum mechanics but it does involve very similar non-equilibrium physics.