Engineering Thermodynamics

Balance energy in a system using the first law: q minus w equals ΔU plus ΔKE plus ΔPE. Learn sign conventions, per-mass forms, and adiabatic processes.

Learn how to apply the ideal gas equation to air, not water or steam, using mass conservation and isothermal and constant-volume cases to relate P, V, and T.

Calculate the change in internal energy and entropy for solids, liquids, and gases. Apply specific heat and latent heat of fusion and vaporization to energy transfers.

Apply the first law to a piston-cylinder with 50 liters of saturated refrigerant 134a, compute mass and boundary work in a constant-pressure process, with a PV diagram.

Apply the first law to an expanding air in a constant-pressure piston-cylinder, using the ideal gas law to find temperatures, then determine work, heat transfer, and internal energy change.

Explore how specific heats drive changes in internal energy and enthalpy for closed and open systems, highlighting constant pressure, phase changes, and avoiding ideal gas for water.

Apply the first law for control volumes to nozzle and diffuser flows, under adiabatic conditions with kinetic energy effects, and explore steam nozzle and air diffuser examples.

Explore turbines and compressors within open-system first-law analysis, derive enthalpy changes for adiabatic devices, examine quality, PV diagrams, and throttling valves in refrigeration cycles.

explore heat exchangers that transfer heat between two fluids without mixing and mixing chambers that directly blend streams, using energy in equals energy out with no boundary heat transfer.

Explore reversibility in thermodynamics, identify causes of irreversibility such as friction, unrestrained expansion, and heat transfer, and study the Carnot cycle as the ideal heat engine.

Explore entropy as a measure of disorder across solids, liquids, and gases, and see how heating increases entropy and how isothermal processes simplify entropy change.

Learn how to calculate entropy and entropy production using the first law, heat, work, and specific heats, with piston cylinder water and steam condensation examples.

Explore how isentropic processes connect two states using entropy, and see a steam turbine example where work derives from enthalpy and entropy.

Understand how entropy changes for liquids, solids, and gases using the first law, incompressibility assumptions, and specific heat relations, with an iron–water quenching example to illustrate entropy generation.

Explain isentropic process relations for an ideal gas, using the air gamma (about 1.4), relative pressure and relative specific volume, with applications to internal combustion engines and compression ratio.

Discover isentropic efficiency and why it provides a better measure of performance than first-law efficiency. Apply isotropic efficiency to turbines, compressors, and nozzles using temperature, pressure, and enthalpy concepts.

Explore an Otto cycle example using isotropic compression at a compression ratio of eight. Use air tables to find state temperatures and pressures, internal energies, heat flow, and cycle efficiency.

describes the Rankine cycle for steam power generation, detailing the pump, boiler, turbine, condenser, and efficiency boosters like reheat and regeneration.

Explore an ideal Rankine cycle by detailing a boiler-turbine-condenser-pump loop, computing enthalpies and qualities at states, and deriving turbine and pump work, net work, and efficiency.

Explore advanced steam power generation with a modern reheat and regeneration cycle, analyzing a 10-state plant with high pressure turbines, feedwater heaters, and practical energy balance calculations.

Explore psychrometrics by analyzing air as dry air plus water vapor, reading humidity ratio, relative humidity, dew point, and enthalpy on the psychrometric chart to design moist air systems.