On Spatial Covariance, Second Law of Thermodynamics and Configurational Forces in Continua

This paper studies the transformation properties of the spatial balance of energy equation for a dissipative material, under the superposition of arbitrary spatial diffeomorphisms. The study reveals that for a dissipative material the transformed energy balance equation has some non-standard terms in it. These terms are related to a system of microforces with its own balance equation. These microforces act during the superposition of the spatial diffeomorphism, because of the dissipative properties of the material. Moreover, it is shown that for the case in question the stress tensor is additively decomposed into a conventional part given by the standard Doyle-Ericksen formula and a non-conventional one which is related to changes in the material internal structure in the course of deformation. On the basis of the second law of thermodynamics and the integrability condition of a Pfaffian form it is shown that the non-conventional part of the stress tensor can be related not only to dissipative but also to conservative response. A further insight to this conservative response is provided by exploiting the invariance properties of the balance of energy equation within the context of the material intrinsic “physical” metric concept. In this case, it is shown that the assumption of spatial covariance yields the standard conservation and balance laws of classical mechanics but it does not yield the standard Doyle-Ericksen formula. In fact, the Doyle-Ericksen formula has an additional term in it, which is related directly to the evolution of the material internal structure, as it is determined by the (time) evolution of the material metric in the spatial configuration. A formal connection between this term and the Eshelby energy-momentum tensor is derived as well. OPEN ACCESS Entropy 2014, 16 3235