Structural stability and convergence in thermoelasticity and heat conduction with relaxation times

This article investigates the structural stability in several thermomechanics and heat conduction theories as well as the convergence of these theories to the classical versions of the thermoelasticity and heat conduction. We consider first the Lord–Shulman theory of thermoelasticity. We study the structural stability with respect to the relaxation parameter and the convergence of the solutions when the relaxation parameter tends to zero. Second we study the dual-phase-lag theory. Assuming that the relaxation parameters are small we consider the Taylor series in which only the first powers of the phase-lag parameters are retained. In this situation we consider the heat equation and study the structural stability and the convergence with respect to the phase-lag of the gradient of temperature. In the last part of the article, we consider the thermoelastic theory proposed by Chandrasekharaiah and Tzou. We study the structural stability and the convergence with respect to both relaxation parameters that describe this theory