Energy Approach to the Formulation of Boundary Problems of Nonlinear Thermomechanics for Elastic Systems

An energy approach is proposed to derive the physical constitutive equations of nonlinear thermomechanics for inertial elastic systems. A potential of local inertial thermodynamic state and a potential of thermoelastic energy dissipation are introduced. The variational formulation of nonlinear boundary problems of thermoelasticity is implemented on the basis of the Hamiltonian energy functional. Sufficient conditions for the convexity of the functional are formulated __________ Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 41, No. 9, pp. 52–59, September 2005.