Thermal-Fluid Systems (saylor.org)

Please note: this legacy course does not offer a certificate and may contain broken links and outdated information. Although archived, it is open for learning without registration or enrollment.

This course deals with the transfer of work, energy, and material via gases and liquids. These fluids may undergo changes in temperature, pressure, density, and chemical composition during the transfer process and may act on or be acted on by external systems. You must fully understand these processes if you are an engineer working to analyze, troubleshoot, or improve existing processes and/or innovate and design new ones.

In your everyday life, you will likely encounter examples of the thermal-fluid systems we will study in this course. Consider the following scenarios:

- Have you ever wondered how the level sensor on a retail gasoline dispenser automatically shuts off when the gasoline tank in an automobile is full?

- Have you ever been tempted to share your opinion concerning the debates about global climate change? Global climate involves consideration of radiation, convection, and chemical change amongst many other factors.

- Have you wondered how it is possible to estimate the composition and flow rate of a mixture of petroleum, water, and natural gas at a remote location five miles under the ocean surface.

- Just how dirty do your air filters need to be in your domestic air handling system or on your motor vehicle for it to be economically advantageous to replace them?

All of these questions can be addressed in part by applying the fundamentals of energy, momentum, and mass transfer to specific situations. You have studied these fundamentals in your Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Mechanics, and Fluid Mechanics courses. This course will give you the opportunity to review and reinforce these fundamentals by applying them to slightly more complex and practical situations and systems. In doing so, you will learn to connect engineering science with practice.

This course will not exhaustively cover all the types of processes and equipment that you may encounter as an engineer. Instead, it will provide you with experience connecting engineering fundamentals with a few applications so that you have the ability and confidence to address new situations as they emerge. Each of the sections subsequent to the first review portion is accompanied by suggested reading, calculations, and exercises to assist you.

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

- Interpret and use scientific notation and engineering units for the description of fluid flow and energy transfer.

- Interpret measurements of thermodynamic quantities for description of fluid flow and energy transfer.

- Use concepts of continuum fluid dynamics to interpret physical situations.

- Determine the interrelationship of variables in pumping and piping operations.

- Analyze heat-exchanger performance and understand design considerations.

- Apply thermodynamics to the analysis of energy conversion and cooling/heating situations.

- Communicate technical information in written and graphical form.