Lyapunov's second method, general properties of perturbation spectra and variational principles (Q1072807)

Sufficient as well as necessary and sufficient thermodynamic conditions for the validity of a monotonicity principle are formulated for the case when alternating and definite functions, respectively, are used as Lyapunov functions. When applied to the problems of stability of non isothermal states at rest and of isothermal flows of an incompressible fluid, these conditions result in the formulation of a classical variational principle for aperiodic perturbations.