WIAS Preprint No. 489, (1999)

Cold, thermal and oscillator closure of the atomic chain



Authors

  • Dreyer, Wolfgang
  • Kunik, Matthias

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification

  • 35L05 35L65 35L67 73B05 73B30 73B03 82B20

Keywords

  • Wave equation, conservation laws, shocks and singularities, constitutive equations, thermodynamics of solids, equilibrium statistical mechanics, foundations, lattice systems, continuum models

DOI

10.20347/WIAS.PREPRINT.489

Abstract

We consider a simple microscopic model for a solid body and study the problematic nature of micro/macro transitions. The microscopic model describes the solid body by a many particle system that develops according to NEWTONs equations of motion.

We discuss various initial value problems that lead to the propagation of waves. The initial value problems are solved directly from the microscopic equations of motion. Additionally these equations serve to establish macroscopic field equations.

The macroscopic field equations consist of conservation laws, which follow rigorously from the microscopic equations, and of closure relations which are completely determined by the distributions of the microscopic motion. In particular we consider three kinds of closure relations which correspond to three different kinds of equilibrium.

It turns out that closure relations cannot be given appropriately without relating them to the initial conditions, and that closure relations might change during the temporal development of the initial data, because the body undergoes several transitions between different states of local equilibrium. In those examples that we have considered, the macroscopic variables mass density and temperature do not constitute an unique kind of microscopic motion.

Appeared in

  • J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., 33(10):2097--2129, 2000

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