Free energies in a general non-local theory of a material with memory

Abstract

A general theory of non-local materials, with linear constitutive equations and memory effects, is developed within a thermodynamic framework. Several free energy and dissipation functionals are constructed and explored. These include an expression for the minimum free energy and a functional that is a free energy for important categories of memory kernels and is explicitly a functional of the minimal state. The functionals discussed have a similar general form to the corresponding expressions for simple materials. A number of new results are derived for them, most of which apply equally to both types of material. In particular, detailed formulae are given for these quantities in the case of sinusoidal histories.