Entropy Production in Irreversible Mechanical Processes

Abstract

IN discussing the concept of entropy, many authors relate the ‘production of heat’ or ‘energetic heat evolution’ (dQ _irrev.) accompanying an irreversible process to the ‘loss of useful work’ and to the ‘irreversible production of entropy’ (d S) by an equation of the form¹: where dW _rev. and dW _irrev. are, respectively, the amounts of work received by the system during a reversible and an irreversible change between the same initial and final states of the system; T is the absolute temperature of the system, supposed uniform throughout.