Applications of extended thermodynamics to chemical, rheological, and transport processes: A special survey. I: Approaches and scalar rate processes. II: Vector transport processes, shear relaxation and rheology. III: Wave phenomena (Q1905411)

This paper is a collection of three papers which provide a very wide and ambitious review of applications of extended irreversible thermodynamics (EIT). This thermodynamic theory goes beyond the local-equilibrium hypothesis and considers the fluxes as independent variables; their evolution equations generalise the classical transport equations including memory and nonlocal effects. The theory has received much attention in the last twenty years, and several books have been recently published on it [\textit{D. Jou}, \textit{J. Casas-Vázquez} and \textit{G. Lebon}, Extended irreversible thermodynamics, Springer (1993; Zbl 0785.73002); \textit{I. Müller} and \textit{T. Ruggeri}, Extended thermodynamics, Springer (1993; Zbl 0801.35141)] or on closely related points of view [\textit{B. C. Eu}, Kinetic theory and irreversible thermodynamics, Wiley (1992); \textit{S. Sieniutycz}, Conservation laws in variational thermohydrodynamics, Kluwer (1994; Zbl 0802.76002)]. The present colleciton of papers is a worthwhile effort which will be very useful not only for the practitioners of EIT, but also for the public interested in the present state of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and statistical mechanics considered from a global perspective, as it gives a very general survey of problems which are beyond the scope of classical irreversible thermodynamics fall in a natural way in the framework of the extended theory. Part I deals with several approaches (variational and Lagrangian methods, extensions of the local equilibrium thermodynamics and rational thermodynamics, and derivations from kinetic theory) and gives an analysis of scalar rate processes in chemical, thermal and structural problems. Part II studies vectorial transport processes (heat conduction and diffusion, dielectric relaxation, electrical conduction, and liquid \(He 4\)), and deals with tensorial problems related to shear relaxation, viscoelasticity and shear-induced phase transitions. Part III is devoted to wave phenomena (heat waves, shock waves, fast-moving heat sources, coupled surface waves in semiconductors). One could add to this vast range of problems several recent analyses of viscous cosmological models and hydrodynamic descriptions of transport in nanometric electronic devices, or in relativistic nuclear collisions, which are not covered here but which seem also promising applications in a near future.