On Objectivity, Irreversibility and Non-Newtonian Fluids

Early progress in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics was facilitated by the emergence of two fundamental and complementary principles: objective constitutive characterizations and unambiguous identification of irreversible processes. Motivated by practical and economic concerns in recent years, this line of fluid research has expanded to include debris flows, slurries, biofluids and fluid-solid mixtures; i.e., complex nonlinear fluids with disparate flow properties. Phenomenological descriptions of these fluids now necessarily include strong nonlinear coupling between the fluxes of mass, energy and momentum. Here, I review these principles, illustrate how they constrain the constitutive equations for non-Newtonian fluids and demonstrate how they have impacted other areas of fluid research.