INTRODUCTION TO

THERMODYNAMICS
CHAPTER ONE
FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND
DEFINITIONS
THERMODYNAMICS AND ENERGY
• Thermodynamics can be defined as the science
of energy. Although everybody has a feeling of
what energy is, it is difficult to give a precise
definition for it.
• Energy can be viewed as the ability to cause
changes.
CONTINUED
• One of the most fundamental laws of nature is the
conservation of energy principle. It simply states that
during an interaction, energy can change from one
form to another but the total amount of energy
remains constant.
• That is, energy cannot be created or destroyed.
• Examples: rock falling off the cliff, diet industry and
exercise and others.
CONTINUED
• The first law of thermodynamics is simply an
expression of the conservation of energy principle,
and it asserts that energy is a thermodynamic
property.
• The second law of thermodynamics asserts that
energy has quality as well as quantity, and actual
processes occur in the direction of decreasing quality
of energy.
CONTINUED
• Although the principles of thermodynamics have been in
existence since the creation of the universe,
thermodynamics did not emerge as a science until the
construction of the first successful atmospheric steam
engines in England by Thomas Savery in 1697 and Thomas
Newcomen in 1712.
• These engines were very slow and inefficient, but they
opened the way for the development of a new science.
CONTINUED
• The first and second laws of thermodynamics emerged
simultaneously in the 1850s, primarily out of the works of
William Rankine, Rudolph Clausius, and Lord Kelvin (formerly
William Thomson).
• The term thermodynamics was first used in a publication by
Lord Kelvin in 1849. The first thermodynamic textbook was
written in 1859 by William Rankine, a professor at the
University of Glasgow
APPLICATION
• All activities in nature involve some interaction
between energy and matter; thus, it is hard to
imagine an area that does not relate to
thermodynamics in some manner.
• The heart is constantly pumping blood to all parts of
the human body, various energy conversions occur in
trillions of body cells, and the body heat generated is
constantly rejected to the environment.
CONTINUED
• Many ordinary household utensils and appliances are
designed, in whole or in part, by using the principles
of thermodynamics. Some examples include the
heating and air-conditioning systems, the refrigerator,
the humidifier, the pressure cooker, the water heater,
the shower, the iron, and even the computer and the
TV.
CONTINUED
• On a larger scale, thermodynamics plays a major part
in the design and analysis of automotive engines,
rockets, jet engines, and conventional or nuclear
power plants, solar collectors, and the design of
vehicles from ordinary cars to airplanes. The size,
location, and the power input of the fan of your
computer is also selected after an analysis that
involves thermodynamics.
IMPORTANCE OF DIMENSIONS AND
UNITS
• Any physical quantity can be characterized by dimensions.
The magnitudes assigned to the dimensions are called units.
Some basic dimensions such as mass m, length L, time t, and
temperature T are selected as primary or fundamental
dimensions, while others such as velocity V, energy E, and
volume V are expressed in terms of the primary dimensions
and are called secondary dimensions, or derived
dimensions.
• We have the English system (pound, foot, second) and the SI
(kilogram, meter, second) system.
Dimensional Homogeneity
• In engineering, all equations must be dimensionally homogeneous.
That is, every term in an equation must have the same unit .
• S = ut + ½ at^2
• all non-primary units (secondary units) can be formed by
combinations of primary units.
• Example: force, density etc
• Sometimes dimensional analysis is used to determine the relation
between variables.
• Example: force, density etc
SYSTEMS AND CONTROL VOLUMES
• A system is defined as a quantity of matter or a
region in space chosen for study.
• The mass or region outside the system is called
the surroundings.
• The real or imaginary surface that separates the
system from its surroundings is called the
boundary.
CONTINUED
• The boundary of a system can be fixed or
movable.
• Note that the boundary is the contact surface
shared by both the system and the surroundings.
• Mathematically speaking, the boundary has zero
thickness, and thus it can neither contain any
mass nor occupy any volume in space.
CONTINUED
• Systems may be considered to be closed or open,
depending on whether a fixed mass or a fixed volume
in space is chosen for study.
• A closed system (also known as a control mass)
consists of a fixed amount of mass, and no mass can
cross its boundary.
CONTINUED
• That is, no mass can enter or leave a closed system.
• But energy, in the form of heat or work, can cross the
boundary; and the volume of a closed system does
not have to be fixed.
• If, as a special case, even energy is not allowed to
cross the boundary, that system is called an isolated
system.
CONTINUED
• An open system, or a control volume, as it is often
called, is a properly selected region in space. It usually
encloses a device that involves mass flow such as a
compressor, turbine, or nozzle.
• Flow through these devices is best studied by
selecting the region within the device as the control
volume. Both mass and energy can cross the
boundary of a control volume.
CONTINUED
• A large number of engineering problems involve mass
flow in and out of a system and, therefore, are
modeled as control volumes.
• A water heater, a car radiator, a turbine, and a
compressor all involve mass flow and should be
analyzed as control volumes (open systems) instead of
as control masses (closed systems).
CONTINUED
• There are no concrete rules for the selection of
control volumes, but the proper choice certainly
makes the analysis much easier. If we were to
analyze the flow of air through a nozzle, for
example, a good choice for the control volume
would be the region within the nozzle.
CONTINUED
• The boundaries of a control volume are called a
control surface, and they can be real or imaginary.
• In the case of a nozzle, the inner surface of the nozzle
forms the real part of the boundary, and the entrance
and exit areas form the imaginary part, since there are
no physical surfaces there.
CONTINUED
• A control volume can be fixed in size and shape, as in the
case of a nozzle, or it may involve a moving boundary.
• Most control volumes, however, have fixed boundaries and
thus do not involve any moving boundaries.
• A control volume can also involve heat and work interactions
just as a closed system, in addition to mass interaction.
• As an example of an open system, consider the water heater.
PROPERTIES OF A SYSTEM
• Any characteristic of a system is called a property.
Some familiar properties are pressure P, temperature
T, volume V, and mass m.
• The list can be extended to include less familiar ones
such as viscosity, thermal conductivity, modulus of
elasticity, thermal expansion coefficient, electric
resistivity, and even velocity and elevation.
CONTINUED
• Properties are considered to be either intensive or extensive.
• Intensive properties are those that are independent of the
mass of a system, such as temperature, pressure, and
density.
• Extensive properties are those whose values depend on the
size—or extent—of the system. Total mass, total volume, and
total momentum are some examples of extensive properties.
CONTINUED
• An easy way to determine whether a property is
intensive or extensive is to divide the system into two
equal parts with an imaginary partition.
• Each part will have the same value of intensive
properties as the original system, but half the value of
the extensive properties.
• Example: pressure, volume, mass, density and
temperature.
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.
• This idealization is valid as long as the size of the system we
deal with is large relative to the space between the
molecules.
STATE AND EQUILIBRIUM
• Consider a system not undergoing any change. At this
point, all the properties can be measured or
calculated throughout the entire system, which gives
us a set of properties that completely describes the
condition, or the state, of the system.
• At a given state, all the properties of a system have
fixed values. If the value of even one property
changes, the state will change to a different one.
CONTINUED
• Thermodynamics deals with equilibrium states. The
word equilibrium implies a state of balance. In an
equilibrium state there are no unbalanced potentials
(or driving forces) within the system. A system in
equilibrium experiences no changes when it is
isolated from its surroundings.
CONTINUED
• There are many types of equilibrium, and a system is
not in thermodynamic equilibrium unless the
conditions of all the relevant types of equilibrium are
satisfied.
• For example, a system is in thermal equilibrium if the
temperature is the same throughout the entire
system. That is, the system involves no temperature
differential, which is the driving force for heat flow.
CONTINUED
• Mechanical equilibrium is related to pressure, and a system
is in mechanical equilibrium if there is no change in pressure
at any point of the system with time.
• However, the pressure may vary within the system with
elevation as a result of gravitational effects.
• For example, the higher pressure at a bottom layer is
balanced by the extra weight it must carry, and, therefore,
there is no imbalance of forces.
CONTINUED
• If a system involves two phases, it is in phase
equilibrium when the mass of each phase reaches an
equilibrium level and stays there.
• Finally, a system is in chemical equilibrium if its
chemical composition does not change with time, that
is, no chemical reactions occur.
• A system will not be in equilibrium unless all the
relevant equilibrium criteria are satisfied.
CONTINUED
• As noted earlier, the state of a system is described by its
properties. But we know from experience that we do not
need to specify all the properties in order to fix a state.
• Once a sufficient number of properties are specified, the rest
of the properties assume certain values automatically. That
is, specifying a certain number of properties is sufficient to
fix a state. The number of properties required to fix the state
of a system is given by the state postulate.
CONTINUED
• The state of a simple compressible system is
completely specified by two independent, intensive
properties.
• A system is called a simple compressible system in
the absence of electrical, magnetic, gravitational,
motion, and surface tension effects. These effects are
due to external force fields and are negligible for most
engineering problems.
CONTINUED
• The state postulate requires that the two
properties specified be independent to fix the
state.
• Two properties are independent if one property
can be varied while the other one is held
constant.
CONTINUED
• Temperature and specific volume, for example, are
always independent properties, and together they can
fix the state of a simple compressible system.
• Temperature and pressure, however, are independent
properties for single-phase systems, but are
dependent properties for multiphase systems.
PROCESSES AND CYCLES
• Any change that a system undergoes from one
equilibrium state to another is called a process, and
the series of states through which a system passes
during a process is called the path of the process.
• To describe a process completely, one should specify
the initial and final states of the process, as well as the
path it follows, and the interactions with the
surroundings.
CONTINUED
• When a process proceeds in such a manner that the system
remains infinitesimally close to an equilibrium state at all
times, it is called a quasi-static, or quasi-equilibrium,
process.
• A quasi-equilibrium process can be viewed as a sufficiently
slow process that allows the system to adjust itself internally
so that properties in one part of the system do not change
any faster than those at other parts.
CONTINUED
• When a gas in a piston-cylinder device is compressed
suddenly, the molecules near the face of the piston
will not have enough time to escape and they will
have to pile up in a small region in front of the piston,
thus creating a high-pressure region there.
CONTINUED
• Because of this pressure difference, the system can no
longer be said to be in equilibrium, and this makes the
entire process non quasi-equilibrium.
• However, if the piston is moved slowly, the molecules
will have sufficient time to redistribute and there will
not be a molecule pileup in front of the piston.
CONTINUED
• It should be pointed out that a quasi-equilibrium
process is an idealized process and is not a true
representation of an actual process.
• But many actual processes closely approximate
it, and they can be modeled as quasi-equilibrium
with negligible error.
CONTINUED
• Engineers are interested in quasi equilibrium
processes for two reasons.
• First, they are easy to analyze; second, work-
producing devices deliver the most work when they
operate on quasi-equilibrium processes.
• Therefore, quasi-equilibrium processes serve as
standards to which actual processes can be compared.
CONTINUED
• Process diagrams plotted by employing
thermodynamic properties as coordinates are very
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).
CONTINUED
CONTINUED
• Note that the process path indicates a series of equilibrium
states through which the system passes during a process and
has significance for quasi equilibrium processes only.
• For non quasi-equilibrium processes, we are not able to
characterize the entire system by a single state, and thus we
cannot speak of a process path for a system as a whole.
• A non quasi-equilibrium process is denoted by a dashed line
between the initial and final states instead of a solid line.
CONTINUED
• The prefix iso- is often used to designate a process for which
a particular property remains constant.
• An isothermal process, for example, is a process during
which the temperature T remains constant; an isobaric
process is a process during which the pressure P remains
constant; and an isochoric (or isometric) process is a process
during which the specific volume v remains constant.
• A system is said to have undergone a cycle if it returns to its
initial state at the end of the process. That is, for a cycle the
initial and final states are identical.
The Steady-Flow Process
• The term steady implies no change with time.
• The opposite of steady is unsteady, or transient.
• The term uniform, however, implies no change
with location over a specified region.
CONTINUED
• A large number of engineering devices operate for
long periods of time under the same conditions, and
they are classified as steady-flow devices.
• Processes involving such devices can be represented
reasonably well by a somewhat idealized process,
called the steady-flow process, which can be defined
as a process during which a fluid flows through a
control volume steadily.
CONTINUED
• That is, the fluid properties can change from point to
point within the control volume, but at any fixed point
they remain the same during the entire process.
Therefore, the volume V, the mass m, and the total
energy content E of the control volume remain
constant during a steady flow process.
CONTINUED
• Steady-flow conditions can be closely approximated
by devices that are intended for continuous operation
such as turbines, pumps, boilers, condensers, and
heat exchangers or power plants or refrigeration
systems. Some cyclic devices, such as reciprocating
engines or compressors, do not satisfy any of the
conditions stated above since the flow at the inlets
and the exits will be pulsating and not steady.
THE STATE POSTULATE, PRESSURE,
TEMPERATURE AND ZEROTH LAW OF
THERMODYNAMICS
• Based on our physiological sensations, we express the
level of temperature qualitatively with words like
freezing cold, cold, warm, hot, and red-hot.
• Fortunately, several properties of materials change
with temperature in a repeatable and predictable way,
and this forms the basis for accurate temperature
measurement.
CONTINUED
• When a body is brought into contact with another
body that is at a different temperature, heat is
transferred from the body at higher temperature to
the one at lower temperature until both bodies attain
the same temperature.
• At that point, the heat transfer stops, and the two
bodies are said to have reached thermal equilibrium.
The equality of temperature is the only requirement
for thermal equilibrium.
CONTINUED
• The zeroth law of thermodynamics states that if two
bodies are in thermal equilibrium with a third body,
they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.
• It may seem silly that such an obvious fact is called
one of the basic laws of thermodynamics.
• However, it cannot be concluded from the other laws
of thermodynamics, and it serves as a basis for the
validity of temperature measurement.
TEMPRATURE SCALE
• Temperature scales enable us to use a common basis
for temperature measurements, and several have
been introduced throughout history.
• All temperature scales are based on some easily
reproducible states such as the freezing and boiling
points of water, which are also called the ice point and
the steam point, respectively.
CONTINUED
• On the Celsius scale, the ice and steam points were originally
assigned the values of 0 and 100°C, respectively. The
corresponding values on the Fahrenheit scale are 32 and
212°F.
• In thermodynamics, it is very desirable to have a
temperature scale that is independent of the properties of
any substance or substances. Such a temperature scale is
called a thermodynamic temperature scale.
CONTINUED
• A temperature scale that turns out to be nearly
identical to the Kelvin
scale is the ideal-gas temperature scale.
• The temperatures on this scale are measured using a
constant-volume gas thermometer.
• The thermodynamic temperature scale in the SI is the
Kelvin scale.
PRESSURE
• Pressure is defined as a normal force exerted by a
fluid per unit area.
• We speak of pressure only when we deal with a gas or
a liquid.
• The counterpart of pressure in solids is normal stress.
CONTINUED
• The actual pressure at a given position is called the
absolute pressure, and it is measured relative to
absolute vacuum (i.e., absolute zero pressure).
• Most pressure-measuring devices, however, are
calibrated to read zero in the atmosphere, and so they
indicate the difference between the absolute pressure
and the local atmospheric pressure.
• This difference is called the gage pressure.
CONTINUED
• Pressures below atmospheric pressure are called
vacuum pressures and are measured by vacuum
gages that indicate the difference between the
atmospheric pressure and the absolute pressure.
• Pressure in a fluid increases with depth because more
fluid rests on deeper layers, and the effect of this
“extra weight” on a deeper layer is balanced by an
increase in pressure.
PRESSURE MEASURING DEVICES
• MANOMETER: is based on the relation between pressure
difference along depth.
• Bourdon tube: consists of a hollow metal tube bent like a
hook whose end is closed and connected to a dial indicator
needle. When the tube is open to the atmosphere, the tube
is un-deflected, and the needle on the dial at this state is
calibrated to read zero (gage pressure). When the fluid inside
the tube is pressurized, the tube stretches and moves the
needle in proportion to the pressure applied.
CONTINUED
• pressure transducers: based on piezo-electric effect.
• Atmospheric pressure is measured by a device called a
barometer.
THE END