Thermal machines
================

A **thermal machine** is a device that permits energy conversion. It consists generally in a set of components such as compressors, turbines, combustion chambers, pumps, heat exchangers, valves, etc. Components of a thermal machine may be crossed by a working fluid (gas or liquid) and then represent open subsystems that can exchange heat and work.

A thermal machine may be:

  * A heat engine: it converts thermal energy to produce a mechanical work.
  * A refrigerator or a heat pump: it uses a mechanical work to transfer thermal energy from a source to a sink.

This course presents the basics requisities for an engineer to understand, study and developp *thermal machines*. It is dedicated to engineer student with a background in thermodynamics for closed systems and basics of fluid mechanics.

The course contains 5 chapters:

   * The first section is a recall of thermodynamics and introduction to fluid mechanics courses. Balance equations are recalled and applied to a control volume representing a component of a thermal machine.
   * The second section presents the basics of energy conversion using thermal machines as well as reference thermodynamics cycles.
   * The third section is devoted to the specific notion of compression/expansion of a gas and how to optimize these thermodynamics transformations.
   * The fourth section is describing classical heat engines: internal reciprocating heat engines, gas turbines and steam turbines.
   * The fifth section is devoted to heat pumps and refrigerators.


.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: Contents:
   :numbered:

   chap1_balanceEquations_Chap
   chap2_thermMachinesBasics_Chap
   chap3_CompExpGas_Chap
   chap4_ThermalEngines_Chap
   chap5_ThermalGenerators_Chap
   zBibliography
   

Table of contents
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* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`search`