A Characterization of Internally Constrained Thermoelastic Materials

Abstract

A new and more primitive treatment of internal constraints for thermoelastic materials is presented. Integrable strain-temperature constraints are considered and are used to define an equivalence relation on the set of unconstrained thermoelastic materials. A unique constrained material is associated with each equivalence class of unconstrained materials. The properties of the constrained material are inherited from the unconstrained materials belonging to its corresponding equivalence class.