Thermoelasto-viscous Materials

A thermoelasto-viscous material is defined by a set of constitutive laws in which the stress, entropy, heat flux and free energy are functions of the present configuration, temperature, temperature gradient and the rate of change of all three of these. Here these materials are presented within the framework of Walter Noll's new theory of simple materials, so that the constitutive laws are specified without the use of a frame of reference. The Coleman-Noll procedure is carried out, and the symmetry group of the material is also discussed, both without using a frame of reference. It is then shown what form the constitutive laws of a fluid thermoelasto-viscous material take when a frame of reference is considered. Finally, the governing equations for these materials are explicitly obtained and discussed. The results in this paper may serve as a foundation for new and better mathematical models to deal with phenomena such as heat transfer, heat exchanges and thermophoresis.