On the thermodynamics of thermoelastic materials with additional scalar degrees of freedom

This work deals with the thermodynamic formulation of a model for a class of materials containing microstructure which evolves or changes relative to\/ the (global) bulk material. The approach taken here is based on a generalization of the total energy, total energy flux, and total energy supply to take into account the corresponding additional degrees of freedom involved. Restricting attention for simplicity to thermoelastic materials with scalar-valued such degrees of freedom, the thermodynamically-consistent forms of the remaining balance and corresponding constitutive relations for this material class are obtained in the context of the Müller-Liu entropy principle. In particular, the thermodynamically-consistent form of the evolution relation for the additional scalar-valued degrees of freedom obtained in this fashion contains in part\/ the well-known generalized Euler-Lagrange or Ginzburg-Landau relations established in many previous work, with the remaining terms accounting for effects associated with microinertia, or with non-equilibrium processes.