Thermodynamic System

Basic Concepts & Terminology

Dr. Md. Zahurul Haq
Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET)
Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

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A thermodynamic system is simply any object, quantity of

matter, or region of space that has been selected for study.

zahurul@me.buet.ac.bd
http://teacher.buet.ac.bd/zahurul/

Everything that is not part of the system is referred to as the

surroundings or environment.

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Boundary or control surface (CS) separates the system from

its surroundings.

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A system dened to contain all of the air in a piston-cylinder device.

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A control surface (CS):

may be real or imaginary, at rest or in motion
may change its shape and size
neither contains matter nor occupies volume
has zero thickness and a property value at a point on the
boundary is shared by both the system and the surroundings.

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A system dened to contain all of the air that is initially in a tank that
is being lled.

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Control Mass (CM) or Closed System

Control Volume (CV) or Open System

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If a control surface is closed to mass ow, so that no mass can escape or

enter into the control volume, then it is called a Control Mass (CM)
or Closed system. Heat and work may cross the system boundary, but
the system contains the same amount of matter at all times.
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Adiabatic System

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When there is ow of mass through control surface, the system is

called a Control Volume (CV) or Open system.

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Classication of Thermodynamic Systems

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In Adiabatic system, the boundary is impermeable to heat.

An Isolated system is a special case of closed system that does not
interact in any way with its surroundings.
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Macroscopic & Microscopic Views of Thermodynamics

State & Property

Thermodynamic systems can be studied from two points of view:

1
2

Microscopic approach or statistical thermodynamics

Macroscopic approach or classical thermodynamics

The microscopic approach recognizes that the system consists of

matter that is composed of countless, discrete molecules. Statistics
and probability theory are applied to deduce the macroscopic
behaviour or measurable quantities e.g. pressure, temperature etc.
In the macroscopic approach, the state of the system is described
by a relatively small set of characteristics that are called
properties e.g. mass, temperature, pressure and volume.
Macroscopic approach works well when the system is suciently
large such that it contains many molecules. For example, how
would you measure the temperature of such a system that consists
almost entirely of vacuum?
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The condition of a system at any instant of time is called its state.

State at a given instant determines the properties of the system.
A property is a quantity whose numerical value depends on the
state but not on the history of the system. The origin of
properties include those
1
2
3

directly measurable
dened by laws of thermodynamics
dened by mathematical combinations of other properties.

Intensive properties are independent of the size or extent of the

system. Extensive properties depend on the size or extent of the
system. An extensive property is additive in the sense that its
value for the whole system is the sum of the values for its parts.
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System boundary

E1, V1, T, P

Esystem = E1 + E2
Extensive Properties

Vsystem = V1 + V2 }

E2, V2, T, P

Tsystem = T1 = T2
} Intensive Properties
Psystem = P1 = P2

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Property
Mass
Volume
KE
PE
Total Energy
Internal Energy
Enthalpy
Entropy
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Extensive
m
V
1
mV 2
2
mgZ
E
U
H
S

Intensive

v
1 2
V
2
gZ
e
u
h
s

Basic Concepts & Terminology

Any property has a xed value in a give state in a given

equilibrium state, regardless of how the system arrives at the state.
Two states are identical if, and only if, the properties of the two
states are identical.
The change in the value of the property that occurs when a
system is altered from equilibrium state to another is always the
same, regardless of the process used to bring about the change.

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Process & Cycle

Thermodynamic Equilibrium

A thermodynamic process is the succession of thermodynamic

states that a system passes through as it goes from an initial state
to a nal state.

A system in thermodynamic equilibrium simultaneously

satises the following stringent requirements:

A system process is said to go through a thermodynamic cycle

when the nal state of the process is the same as the initial state
of the process.

Mechanical Equilibrium: no unbalance forces acting on any part

of the system or the system as a whole.
Thermal Equilibrium: no temperature dierences between parts
of the system or between the system and the surrounding.
Chemical Equilibrium: no chemical reactions within the system
and no motion of any chemical species from one part to another
part of the system.

Once the system is in thermodynamic equilibrium and the

surroundings is kept unchanged, no motion will take place and no
work will be done.
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Categories of Thermodynamics Quantities

1

State functions: All properties are state functions.

Process or Path functions: quantities whose values depend on

the path of the process.
2
1

Z Z12 = Z

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During a quasi-static process, the system is at all time innitesimally

near a state thermodynamic equilibrium.
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dy = y2 y1 = y

dy = 0
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State function

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Path function
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Conservation of Mass

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics
Two systems with thermal equilibrium with a third are in thermal
equilibrium with each other.

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mcv ,t + min = mcv ,t +t + mout

mcv ,t +t mcv ,t = min mout

mcv ,t +t mcv ,t
t

dmcv
dt

min mout
t

= min mout

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Dr. Md. Zahurul Haq

: if t 0
dmcv
dt

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in

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min

out

mout

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