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Constitutive Relation




I have been re-reading Clifford Truesdell "The Tragicomedy of Classical
Thermodynamics" at the suggestion of Steve Houk -- The guy (Truesdell not
Hoak) is really hard to read even after one gets around his megalomania --

What does he mean by "constitutive relation?

"Fourier stated this last assumption only in connection with the linear
constitutive relation H=K(theta)grad(theta)" where theta is the temp and H
is the "heat rate" [yuch] and K the conductivity.

"Like Fourier, Carnot could not operate without a special constitutive
relation." The equation in the previous paragraph is pv=R(theta), but I see
no connection.

Help anyone???




Jim Green
JMGreen@sisna.com