Thermoelastic waves without energy dissipation in an unbounded body with a spherical cavity (Q1578355)

The authors employ the Green-Naghdi model to investigate the thermoelastic field caused by a spherical cavity inserted into a homogeneous isotropic medium. The following boundary conditions are used: in time a Heaviside step of temperature on the outer face of the sphere which is stress-free. The application of Laplace transform method allows to derive the operational solution which depends only on the radial coordinate. Because of the complexity of the general formulation, the authors give explicitly only a small-amplitude solution. It is shown that the field consists of two coupled components: a (quasi) elastic one and a (quasi) thermal one, all of them propagating with finite velocities. The feature of the present model is that no exponential decay occurs because no diffusion of heat occurs. Finally, the results obtained are compared with other current models in the generalized thermoelasticity.