Thermodynamic model of nonequilibrium phase transitions

Momentum transport of morphological instability in fluid displacement with changes in viscosity

Saffman-Taylor instability exhibits a stepwise unstable morphology from a stable interface to viscous fingering, eventually leading to tip splitting. The nonlinear dynamics of the destabilized interface depends on various flow properties. However, the physicochemical mechanism that determines the transition point of the flow state is unclear. We studied the interfacial instability transition in miscible displacement from a thermodynamic perspective by calculating the momentum transport and entropy production. Using numerical analysis based on Darcy's law coupled with the convection-diffusion equation, the observed flux-dependent flow state transitions were attributed to the selection of the flow state with a higher entropy production.

Phytoplankton Temporal Strategies Increase Entropy Production in a Marine Food Web Model

We develop a trait-based model founded on the hypothesis that biological systems evolve and organize to maximize entropy production by dissipating chemical and electromagnetic free energy over longer time scales than abiotic processes by implementing temporal strategies. A marine food web consisting of phytoplankton, bacteria, and consumer functional groups is used to explore how temporal strategies, or the lack thereof, change entropy production in a shallow pond that receives a continuous flow of reduced organic carbon plus inorganic nitrogen and illumination from solar radiation with diel and seasonal dynamics. Results show that a temporal strategy that employs an explicit circadian clock produces more entropy than a passive strategy that uses internal carbon storage or a balanced growth strategy that requires phytoplankton to grow with fixed stoichiometry. When the community is forced to operate at high specific growth rates near 2 d⁻¹, the optimization-guided model selects for phytoplankton ecotypes that exhibit complementary for winter versus summer environmental conditions to increase entropy production. We also present a new type of trait-based modeling where trait values are determined by maximizing entropy production rather than by random selection.

Nonlinear Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics Based on the Ehrenfest-Klein Model

Nonlinear non-equilibrium thermodynamic relations have been constructed based on the generalized Ehrenfest-Klein model. Using these relations, the behavior of the entropy and its production in time at arbitrary deviations from equilibrium has been studied. It has been shown that the transient fluctuation theorem is valid for this model if a dissipation functional is treated as the thermodynamic entropy production.

Thermodynamic analysis of thermal convection based on entropy production

Flow patterns have a tendency to break the symmetry of an initial state of a system and form another spatiotemporal pattern when the system is driven far from equilibrium by temperature difference. For an annular channel, the axially symmetric flow becomes unstable beyond a given temperature difference threshold imposed in the system, leading to rotational oscillating waves. Many researchers have investigated this transition via linear stability analysis using the fundamental conservation equations and the generic model amplitude equation, i.e., the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. Here, we present a quantitative study conducted of the thermal convection transition using thermodynamic analysis based on the maximum entropy production principle. Our analysis results reveal that the fluid system under nonequilibrium maximizes the entropy production induced by the thermodynamic flux in a direction perpendicular to the temperature difference. Further, we show that the thermodynamic flux as well as the entropy production can uniquely specify the thermodynamic states of the entire fluid system and propose an entropy production selection rule that can be used to specify the thermodynamic state of a nonequilibrium system.