Systems, variational principles and interconnections in nonequilibrium thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel variational formulation for modeling interconnected nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems, extending Hamilton's principle to better understand complex physical networks.

Contribution

It proposes a new Lagrangian variational approach to describe interconnected nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems, bridging thermodynamics with variational mechanics.

Findings

New variational principle for nonequilibrium thermodynamics

Unified framework for modeling interconnected systems

Potential for cross-disciplinary applications in science

Abstract

The paper investigates a systematic approach to modeling in nonequilibrium thermodynamics by focusing upon the notion of interconnections, where we propose a novel Lagrangian variational formulation of such interconnected systems by extending the variational principle of Hamilton in mechanics. In particular, we show how a nonequilibrium thermodynamic system can be regarded as an interconnected system of primitive physical elements or subsystems throughout an interconnection. While this approach is new in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, this idea has been known as a useful tool for the modeling of complicated systems in networks as well as in mechanics. Hence, the setting developed in this paper yields a promising direction for building a unifying description in various areas of modern science via thermodynamic principles, while being at the same time related to the early developments of variational mechanics.