No label defined (Q4030495)

This paper provides a thermodynamical framework for the constitutive relations which should be regarded in the analysis of crack propagation. Referring to Glansdorff and Prigogine, the author starts presenting a generalization of classical thermodynamics of irreversible processes (TIP): The ``phenomenological'' relations between thermodynamical forces and fluxes are non-linear. The symmetry of the constitutive matrix in linear TIP due to Onsager's reciprocity is transferred to the derivatives of fluxes with respect to forces. Thus we have integrability conditions, and the fluxes can be derived from a dissipation potential. Moreover, the matrix of the flux derivations is assumed to be positive definite. That means an additional property, a form of material stability what is no consequence of the second law in the nonlinear case. The specified relation between dissipation potential and entropy production is consistent but not a unique solution and is indeed not used in the following considerations. Then the force-flux relations are transformed into equivalent variational principles using the space of forces or one of fluxes or both ones combined as domains. The above mentioned definiteness of the differential phenomenological matrix causes the extremal property of the variational functionals. Also constraints are considered. The application to fracture mechanics uses as primary state coordinates, the elastic portion of a single force displacement, the crack length and a mean temperature and, as secondary non-equilibrium variables, the rates of the crack length and of the inelastic portion of displacement. The free energy as well as the dissipation potential contains besides the bulk term a further one due to the crack surface. With this concept, the relations between the dependent constitutive quantities are deduced from the stated thermodynamics by means of the force dependent variational principle.