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Engineering Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is bookkeeping with a direction attached: the first law says the books must balance, the second says which way the entries can go. These topics animate the boundary and the flows across it.

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Foundations

Systems, boundaries, properties and states — the vocabulary everything else is written in.

  • Properties, state and equilibrium
  • Processes and cycles
  • Zeroth law and temperature scales
  • Work and heat as boundary interactions

The first law

Energy is conserved — applied to closed systems, then to flows.

  • First law for a closed system
  • Internal energy and enthalpy
  • Specific heats
  • Steady flow energy equation
  • Applications: nozzles, turbines, compressors, throttles

The second law

Why energy being conserved is not enough to make it useful.

  • Kelvin-Planck and Clausius statements
  • Heat engines, refrigerators and COP
  • Carnot cycle and Carnot efficiency
  • Clausius inequality
  • Entropy and the principle of increase
  • Availability and irreversibility

Properties of pure substances

Steam tables, and what a phase diagram is actually recording.

  • Phase change and the p-v-T surface
  • Dryness fraction and steam tables
  • Mollier diagram
  • Ideal gas and real gas equations

Power and refrigeration cycles

The arrangements engineers actually build.

  • Otto, Diesel and dual cycles
  • Brayton cycle
  • Rankine cycle and reheat/regeneration
  • Vapour compression refrigeration
  • Psychrometry
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