The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Cyclic Processes

This paper is concerned with the implications of a modified form of an inequality proposed recently by Green and Naghdi [3] in regard to the classical statements of the second law of thermodynamics associated with cyclic thermomechanical processes. The results obtained are compared with corresponding previous studies by Fosdick and Serrin [1] and by Truesdell [2] who employ the Clausius-Duhem inequality. Our development also employs an alternative definition to that used in [1, 2] for the quantity of heat absorbed or emitted by a body.