Electrically polarized mixtures of porous bodies

In this paper we propose a mathematical model of a mixture between a porous material and a polarized fluid in the mechanics of complex bodies. We use a variational approach to derive the global and microstructural balance laws for each phase of the mixture and for the mixture as a whole. Such balances differ from those generally proposed in theory of mixtures. We consider an open system and we account for external sources. Moreover, via the Coleman and Noll procedure we point out that the transport equation for the matter in a polarized mixture due to electrical field is governed by the Nernst–Planck equation.