Constraints, Constitutive Limits, and Instability in Finite Thermoelasticity

This paper examines all the possible types of thermomechanical constraints in finite-deformational elasticity. By a thermomechanical constraint we mean a functional relationship between a mechanical variable, either the deformation gradient or the stress, and a thermal variable, temperature, entropy or one of the energy potentials; internal energy, Helmholtz free energy, Gibbs free energy or enthalpy. It is shown that for the temperature-deformation, entropy-stress, enthalpy-deformation, and Helmholtz free energy-stress constraints equilibrium states are unstable, in the sense that certain perturbations of the equilibrium state grow exponentially. By considering the constrained materials as constitutive limits of unconstrained materials, it is shown that the instability is associated with the violation of the Legendre–Hadamard condition on the internal energy. The entropy-deformation, temperature-stress, internal energy-stress, and Gibbs free energy-deformation constraints do not exhibit this instability. It is proposed that stability of the rest state (or equivalently convexity of internal energy) is a necessary requirement for a model to be physically valid, and hence entropy-deformation, temperature-stress, internal energy-stress, and Gibbs free energy-deformation constraints are physical, whereas temperature-deformation constraints (including the customary notion of thermal expansion that density is a function of temperature only), entropy-stress constraints, enthalpy-deformation constraints, and Helmholtz free energy-stress constraints are not.