  In this paper we introduce a general abstract formulation of a variational
thermomechanical model, by means of a unified derivation via a generalization
of the principle of virtual powers for all the variables of the system,
including the thermal one. In particular, choosing as thermal variable the
entropy of the system, and as driving functional the internal energy, we get a
gradient flow structure (in a suitable abstract setting) for the whole
nonlinear PDE system. We prove a global in time existence of (weak) solutions
result for the Cauchy problem associated to the abstract PDE system as well as
uniqueness in case of suitable smoothness assumptions on the functionals.
