Formulation of thermo-elastic dissipative material behavior using GENERIC

We show that the coupled balance equations for a large class of dissipative materials can be cast in the form of GENERIC (General Equations for Non-Equilibrium Reversible Irreversible Coupling). In dissipative solids, also called generalized standard materials, the state of a material point is decribed by dissipative internal variables in addition to the elastic deformation and the temperature. The framework GENERIC allows for an efficient derivation of thermodynamically consistent coupled field equations, while revealing additional underlying physical structures, like the role of the free energy as the driving potential for reversible effects and the role of the free entropy (Massieu potential) as the driving potential for dissipative effects. Applications to large and small-strain thermoplasticity is given. Moreover, for the quasistatic case, where the deformation can be statically eliminated, we derive a generalized gradient structure for the internal variable and the temperature with a reduced entropy as driving functional.