An extended variational formulation of the non-linear heat and mass transfer in a porous medium

Abstract

A variational formulation based on the method of “local potential” is presented for the nonlinear heat and mass transfer during drying of a moist body. A functional is obtained from which the balance equations of the process follow as Euler-Lagrange equations in the extended sense of Prigogine and Glansdorff. The method has been applied to the problem of heat and mass transfer in an infinite plate with temperature and moisture dependent thermal and mass diffusivities under boundary conditions of the first kind.