The theory of irreversible thermodynamics for arbitrarily curved lipid
membranes is presented here. The coupling between elastic bending and
irreversible processes such as intra-membrane lipid flow, intra-membrane phase
transitions, and protein binding and diffusion is studied. The forms of the
entropy production for the irreversible processes are obtained, and the
corresponding thermodynamic forces and fluxes are identified. Employing the
linear irreversible thermodynamic framework, the governing equations of motion
along with appropriate boundary conditions are provided.Comment: 62 pages, 4 figure
