Education For All

Lectures

Thermodynamics

Course Summary

The objective of the course is to enable students to use the First Law of Thermodynamics to estimate the potential for thermo-mechanical energy conversion particularly in aerospace power and propulsion systems. This course is taught as part of the Unified Engineering course in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. (Video recordings of lectures are not available but this course includes a very good set of lecture notes and course material)

After taking this course students should be able to state the First Law and to define heat, work, thermal efficiency and the difference between various forms of energy; to identify and describe energy exchange processes in aerospace systems; to explain at a simple level how various heat engines work; to apply the steady-flow energy equation or the First Law of Thermodynamics to a system of thermodynamic components to estimate required balances of heat, work and energy flow; to explain at a non-technical level the concepts of path dependence/independence and reversibility/irreversibility of various thermodynamic processes and to represent these in terms of changes in thermodynamic state; to apply ideal cycle analysis to simple heat engine cycles to estimate thermal efficiency and work as a function of pressures and temperatures at various points in the cycle.

Reading Material

Not available.

Course Material

1. Compendium of equations for the course

Other Resources

Not available.

Software

Not available.