On the thermodynamics of thermoelastic materials with additional scalar degrees of freedom (Q1303837)

The author proposes thermodynamic model for a class of materials containing microstructure evolving relative to the bulk material. Additional degrees of freedom are taken into account in generalised expressions for total energy, energy flux and energy supply. The theory is applied to thermoelastic materials with scalar-valued degrees of freedom. Thermodynamically consistent evolution equations for the latter are obtained in the context of Müller-Liu entropy principle. These equations contain in part previously well-known relations (e.g. Ginzburg-Landau) plus remaining contributions accounting for effects associated with microinertia or with nonequilibrium processes. Finally, the author analyses parallelisms between the modeling of standard continuum degrees of freedom and that of additional scalar-valued degrees of freedom.