A Dynamical Systems Theory of Thermodynamics [Bookshelf]

This book, organized into 17 chapters, is a unique and effectively organized blend of thermodynamics and the theory of dynamical systems. It provides the reader a significant and scholarly contribution of the subject matter that scans several fields, including control theory, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The author of the book is a respected educator and leader in the area of feedback control, and his previous contributions have set trends in both education and control theoretical research. This book provides a mathematically rigorous framework of thermodynamics based on dynamical systems theory. The treatment is original and fills a gap in the current literature. This book is intended for university researchers (graduate and postgraduate level) in automatic control systems, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and several fields of engineering. It can also be used as a supplementary text in an advanced graduate course in thermodynamics, a special topics course, or as an independent study resource. Practically all industrial processes involve the conversion of energy from one form to another. Thus, it can also be useful in industrial circles to engineers, physicists, and chemists working with chemical processes, industrial control, and nuclear engineering. Several connections also exist to the area of reinforcement learning. The geometry of the optimal frontier suggests a wide array of identities involving functionals and their partial derivatives. The framework developed in this book can potentially lead to the development of new quantitative measures and relationships among properties of cyberphysical models that result in a novel theoretical foundation of reinforcement learning.