MFGE 4315/5315 Energy and Thermofluids Engineering

Lecture 2

Basic Concepts

Namwon Kim, Ph.D.

Ingram School of Engineering

Systems and Control Volumes

○ System: A quantity of matter or a region in space chosen for

study.
○ Surroundings: The mass or region outside the system
○ Boundary: The real or imaginary surface that separates the system
from its surroundings.
○ The boundary of a system can be fixed or movable.

Water heater
 Closed System (Control mass)

○ Systems may be considered to be closed or open.

○ Closed system (control mass): A fixed amount of mass, and no
mass can cross its boundary.

Mass cannot cross the A closed system with

boundaries of a closed a moving boundary.
system, but energy can.

Open System (Control Volume)

○ Open system (control volume): A properly selected region in space.

It usually encloses a device that involves mass flow such as a
compressor, turbine, or nozzle. Both mass and energy can cross the
boundary of a control volume.

An open system (a
control volume) with one
inlet and one exit.
 Properties of A System

• Property: Any characteristic of a system.

• Some familiar properties are pressure P,
temperature T, volume V, and mass m.
• Properties are considered to be either
intensive or extensive.
• Intensive properties: Those that are
independent of the mass of a system, such as
temperature, pressure, and density.
• Extensive properties: Those whose values
depend on the size—or extent—of the system.
• Specific properties: Extensive properties per
unit mass.

Criterion to differentiate
intensive and extensive
properties.

Properties of A System

Continuum
• Matter is made up of atoms that are widely spaced in the gas
phase. Yet it is very convenient to disregard the atomic nature of
a substance and view it as a continuous, homogeneous matter
with no holes, that is, a continuum.
• The continuum idealization allows us to treat properties as point
functions and to assume the properties vary continually in space
with no jump discontinuities.
• In this text we will limit our consideration to substances that can
be modeled as a continuum.
 Density and Specific Volume

• Density

m

V
 kg / m3 

• Specific volume

V 1
v 
m 

Density is mass per unit volume; specific

volume is volume per unit mass.

Specific Gravity and Weight

• Specific gravity: The ratio of the density Specific gravities of

of a substance to the density of some some substances at 0°C
standard substance at a specified
temperature (usually water at 4°C). Substance SG
Water 1.0

SG  Blood 1.05
H O
2
Seawater 1.025
Gasoline 0.7
Ethyl alcohol 0.79
Mercury 13.6
• Specific weight: The weight of a unit
volume of a substance. Wood 0.3–0.9
Gold 19.2
s  g N / m 
3 Bones
Ice
1.7–2.0
0.92
Air (at 1 atm) 0.0013
 Process and Cycles

Process: Any change that a

system undergoes from one
equilibrium state to another.
Path: The series of states
through which a system passes
during a process.

A process between states 1 and 2 and

the process path.

Process and Cycles

Process diagrams plotted by employing The P-V diagram of a compression

thermodynamic properties as coordinates are very process.
useful in visualizing the processes.
Some common properties that are used as
coordinates are temperature T, pressure P, and
volume V (or specific volume v).

The prefix iso- is often used to designate a process

for which a particular property remains constant.
Isothermal process: A process during which the
temperature T remains constant.
Isobaric process: A process during which the
pressure P remains constant.
Isochoric (or isometric) process: A process during
which the specific volume v remains constant.
Cycle: A process during which the initial and final
states are identical.
 Temperature

Ice (freezing) point: A mixture of ice and water that is in equilibrium with air
saturated with vapor at 1 atm pressure (0 °C or 32 °F).
Steam (boiling) point: A mixture of liquid water and water vapor (with no air) in
equilibrium at 1 atm pressure (100 °C or 212 °F).
Celsius scale: Temperature in SI unit system
Fahrenheit scale: Temperature in English unit system
Thermodynamic temperature scale: Kelvin scale (SI) Rankine scale (E)

T(K) = T(°C) + 273.15

T(R) = T(°F) + 459.67 ΔT (K) = ΔT (°C)
T(R) = 1.8T(K) ΔT (R) = ΔT (°F)
T(°F) = 1.8T(°C) + 32

Pressure

○ Pressure is defined as the amount of force exerted by a fluid

on a unit area of a substance.

2
N/m or pascal (Pa)

1 Pa  1N / m 2
1bar  105 Pa  0.1MPa  100kPa
1atm  101, 325 Pa  101.325 kPa  1.01325 bars
 Pressure

Absolute pressure: The actual pressure at a given position. It is measured relative to

absolute vacuum (i.e., absolute zero pressure).
Gage pressure: The difference between the absolute pressure and the local atmospheric
pressure. Most pressure-measuring devices are calibrated to read zero in the atmosphere,
and so they indicate gage pressure.
Vacuum pressures: Pressures below atmospheric pressure.
In this text, the pressure P will denote absolute pressure unless specified otherwise.

Pgage = Pabs  Patm Absolute, gage, and vacuum pressures.

Pvac = Patm  Pabs

Pressure

The pressure of a fluid at rest increases

with depth (as a result of added weight).

In a room filled with gas,

the variation of pressure
with height is negligible.

P  Patm   gh or Pgage   gh

Pressure in a liquid at rest increases

linearly with distance from the free
surface.
 Pressure

Under hydrostatic conditions, the pressure is the same at all points

on a horizontal plane in a given fluid regardless of geometry,
provided that the points are interconnected by the same fluid.

Barometer

○ Pressure Measurement Devices: Atmospheric pressure

The Barometer
The basic barometer.
• Atmospheric pressure is measured by a
device called a barometer; thus, the
atmospheric pressure is often referred to
as the barometric pressure.
• A frequently used pressure unit is the
standard atmosphere, which is defined
as the pressure produced by a column of
mercury 760 mm in height at 0 °C

 Hg  13,595 kg / m3 

• under standard gravitational acceleration

( g  9.807 m / s 2 )
Patm   gh
 Barometer

○ Pressure Measurement Devices: Atmospheric pressure

The length and the cross-sectional

area of the tube have no effect on
the height of the fluid column of a
barometer, provided that the tube
diameter is large enough to avoid
surface tension (capillary) effects.

Manometer

It is commonly used to measure small and moderate pressure

differences. A manometer mainly consists of a glass or plastic U-tube
containing one or more fluids such as mercury, water, alcohol, or oil.

P2  Patm   gh In stacked-up fluid layers at rest, the pressure

change across each fluid layer of density ρ
and height h is ρgh.
Patm  1 gh1  2 gh2  3 gh3  P1
Patm   g (h1  h2  h3 )  P1
 Manometer

Measuring the pressure drop across a flow section or a flow device

by a differential manometer.

P1  1 g (a  h)   2 gh  1 ga  P2

P1  P2  (  2  1 ) gh

Example

The water in a tank is pressurized by air, and

the pressure is measured by a multi-fluid
manometer as shown in figure. Determine
the gage pressure of air in the tank if h1 =
0.2m, h2 = 0.3m, and h3 = 0.46m. Take the
densities of water, oil, and mercury to be
1,000 kg/m3, 850 kg/m3, and 13,600 kg/m3,
respectively.