A Unified Procedure for Construction of Theories of Deformable Media. I. Classical Continuum Physics

A new unified procedure for constructing continuum theories of deformable media is presented and used in this and a companion paper. The procedure starts with a balance of energy and derives from it all the relevant balance laws that may also include those that are associated with thermal, electrical and magnetic effects; the basic energetic ingredients that are included in the balance of energy depend, of course, on the nature of the particular theory of material behaviour desired. The advantage of the new procedure becomes especially apparent when one considers formulation of a new theory of material behaviour for which additional balance laws (involving new kinetic quantities) are required to accompany any additional basic kinematic and thermal variables additional to those in the classical formulation. Indeed, in the formulation of such new theories, usually little or no previous information is available concerning properties of the new kinetic quantities in the additional balance laws; and, in this connection, the unified procedure of this paper provides a simple attractive setting for deriving the basic equations that are automatically consistent with the energy balance. In this paper, first the basic features of the new procedure are illustrated in the context of classical thermomechanics. Generalizations of this thermomechanical theory are then discussed in two cases: (1) in the presence of an additional kinematic variable and (2) in the presence of full electromagnetic effects. Both of these generalizations bring out some interesting novel features when new theories are being constructed.