Application of the Onsager-Machlup integral in solving dynamic equations in nonequilibrium systems.

In 1931, Onsager proposed a variational principle which has become the base of many kinetic equations for nonequilibrium systems. We have been showing that this principle is useful in obtaining approximate solutions for the kinetic equations, but our previous method has a weakness that it can be justified, strictly speaking, only for small incremental time. Here we propose an improved method which does not have this drawback. The improved method utilizes the integral proposed by Onsager and Machlup in 1953, and can tell us which of the approximate solutions is the best solution without knowing the exact solution. The improved method has an advantage that it allows us to determine the steady state in nonequilibrium system by a variational calculus. We demonstrate this using three examples, (a) simple diffusion problem, (b) capillary problem in a tube with corners, and (c) free boundary problem in liquid coating, for which the kinetic equations are written in second or fourth-order partial differential equations.