From the reviews: "The book is excellent, and covers a very broad area (usually treated as separate topics) from a unified perspective. [...] It will be very useful for both mathematicians and physicists." EMS Newsletter

This book presents different thermodynamic approaches in the area of constitutive theory: thermodynamics of irreversible processes, rational thermodynamics, and extended thermodynamics. These different approaches are analyzed with respect to their presuppositions, as well as to their results, and each method is applied to several important examples. In many cases these examples are archetypes for numerous technologically important materials; i.e. complex materials having an internal structure. Some of the examples dealt with in this book are liquid crystals, colloid suspensions, ans fiber suspensions. The book well serves students and researchers who have basic knowledge in continuum mechanics and thermodynamics. It provides a systematic overview of the vast field of thermodynamic constitutive theory, beginning from a historical perspective and concluding with outstanding questions in recent research.

Discover the many facets of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The first part of this book describes the current thermodynamic formalism recognized as the classical theory. The second part focuses on different approaches. Throughout the presentation, the emphasis is on problem-solving applications. To help build your understanding, some problems have been analyzed using several formalisms to underscore their differences and their similarities.

In this book, Samohýl and Pekař offer a consistent and general non-equilibrium thermodynamic description for a model of chemically reacting mixtures. This type of model is frequently encountered in practice and up until now, chemically reacting systems (out of equilibrium) have rarely been described in books on non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Readers of this book benefit from the systematic development of the theory; this starts with general principles, going through the applications to single component fluid systems, and finishing with the theory of mixtures, including chemical reactions. The authors describe the simplest mixture model – the linear fluid – and highlight many practical and thermodynamically consistent equations for describing transport properties and reaction kinetics for this model. Further on in the book, the authors also describe more complex models. Samohýl and Pekař take special care to clearly explain all methodology and starting axioms and they also describe in detail applied assumptions and simplifications. This book is suitable for graduate students in chemistry, materials science and chemical engineering as well as professionals working in these and related areas.