Mixing character and its application to irreversible processes in macroscopic systems

摘要

The rsquo;rsquo;Principle of Increasing Mixing Character,rsquo;rsquo; first described by Ruch and the present author, is presented in a somewhat modified formulation. The theory is then developed in such a way as to make it applicable to irreversible processes in nonideal systems. In systems described by a large number of parameters for which the rsquo;rsquo;exponential assumptionrsquo;rsquo; (essentially the same as the wellhyphen;known localhyphen;equilibrium assumption) can be made, the entire content is contained in a single, intuitively appealing expression. The result is applied to a simple example: diffusion in the Landau model of a nonideal solution.