On crack stability in a thermoelastic body (Q1184425)

As mentioned by the author, it is an abbreviated paper. The crack problem is modelled as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic process for which the following hypotheses are introduced: (i) the usual conservation laws for mass, linear and angular momenta, as well as the laws of thermodynamics are valid; (ii) the crack is regarded as a region of material discontinuity whose surface therefore represents a singular surface; (iii) material properties such as specific internal energy, entropy etc. are defined separately for points within the volume and those on the inner and outer surfaces. With this model, the author shows that the stability conditions for dynamic crack propagation can be obtained by means of suitably selected Lyapunov functions.