Thermal stresses

In this paper we formulate a geometric theory of nonlinear thermoelasticity that can be used to calculate the time evolution of the temperature and thermal stress fields in a nonlinear elastic body. In particular, this formulation can be used to calculate residual thermal stresses. In this theory the material manifold (natural stress-free configuration of the body) is a Riemannian manifold with a temperature-dependent metric. Evolution of the geometry of the material manifold is governed by a generalized heat equation.

In this paper we formulate a geometric theory of thermal stresses.
Given a temperature distribution, we associate a Riemannian
material manifold to the body, with a metric that explicitly
depends on the temperature distribution. A change of temperature
corresponds to a change of the material metric. In this sense, a
temperature change is a concrete example of the so-called
referential evolutions. We also make a concrete connection between
our geometric point of view and the multiplicative decomposition