Thermodynamics of shape-memory alloys under electric current (Q980695)

The paper develops a general rational thermodynamically consistent continuum mechanical model of shape-memory alloys (SMA). With this aim several generally accepted models are combined, in particular hyperelastic materials at large strains and the so-called generalized standard solids with internal parameters involving a vector order parameters similar to Fremond's model and phase-field models. In order to derive in a systematic way the evolution laws of the vector order parameter, the authors adopt the concept of microforce. Moreover, they introduce the concept of dissipative forces having (pseudo) potentials (some of them may be degree-1 homogeneous to describe phenomenologically activated rate independent effects, which are typical of phase transformation). The authors also consider a coupling with electric current through Onsager-type cross-effects and production of heat through Joule effects. Thus, the general model accounts with phase dependence not only for electric resistivity (or conductivity), but also for heat conductivity. To take temperature into account, a balance of internal energy is included and an entropy inbalance is postulated by using the Colleman-Noll procedure to rule out thermodynamically inconsistent constitutive choices. In order to account for capillarity effects (i.e., energy storage that depends on the second derivative of the displacement), the authors also introduce a mechanical hyperstress. By combining the balance equations with the constitutive equations, they obtain a general system of partial differential equations describing generalized standard materials with heat and electricity condition. Then, the authors focus on materials exhibiting solid-solid phase transformation with heat and electricity conduction. The developed model hits the most important above-mentioned phenomena and allows for a rigorous mathematical analysis. In particular, it covers the case of multi-well stored energies (similar to Falk's model) related to a possible co-existence of several phases or phase variants. Moreover, the authors take into account the so-called ``capillarity-like'' second-order effects and the ``viscosity-like'' effects that usually accompany them. In analysis of the SMA model, there are considered smooth initial condition, time-independent hard-device loading and vanishing surface load. Existence of a (not necessarily unique) standard weak solution to the boundary-value problem is shown by usual monotonicity methods, coercivity arguments and compact embeddings.