Gyarmati's principle and Edelen representation of thermodynamic forces in the maximum entropy formalism

Gyarmati's variational principle is generalized to nonlinear cases in the maximum entropy formalism of Jaynes by basing it on a statistical mechanical expression involving the partition function. The force representation for the general solution of the Clausius-Duhem inequality due to Edelen, which is expressed as the sum of the dissipative and non-dissipative parts of the thermodynamic forces, is also found to be derivable from within the maximum entropy formalism.