Implicit equations for thermoelastic bodies

Abstract

In this paper we generalize the recent implicit models that have been put into place to describe the elastic response of bodies when thermal effects come into play. The implicit constitutive relations for thermoelastic response presented here provide a very natural way to overcome a serious problem associated with the celebrated model due to Fourier, namely infinite speed of the propagation of temperature. We also study some boundary value problems within the context of the implicit equations that we have developed. We carry out a linearization based on the classical assumption that the displacement gradient is small and obtain constitutive relations that allow the linearized strain to be a non-linear function of the stress and temperature.