General aspects of thermodynamical modeling

Abstract

Solving a thermal problem means a solution of a mathematical model that governs the process and describes its time evolution. The thermodynamic background of these mathematical models is discussed in the present chapter. There are two building blocks of such a model. The first block consists the well-known balance equations such as the mass, momentum, and energy. The second one is the so-called constitutive relation, which tells us ‘how a material behaves’. This chapter is about their thermodynamic background.