Nonlocality and thermodynamic restrictions in phase-field models (Q2488727)

Two nonlinear phase-field models are presented under various thermodynamic restrictions and using the balance of energy as the only significant balance law. The first model is expressed through functionals of the phase field over the region of the body. The second model accounts for nonlocality effects by considering functions which depend on the gradient instead of functional of the whole field. So, the nonlocality is then expressed in the limit form of the dependence of the gradient of the phase field. The thermodynamic restrictions derived express that for the first model no significant result follows about the relaxation law with the rescaled free energy, while in the second model the evolution equation to be formed involves the variational derivative of the rescaled free energy.