Aerospace Thermodynamics

AS2007
Dr Surendra Ghadai

FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

Moving Boundary Work
• One form of mechanical work mostly encountered in practice involved with the
expansion or compression of a gas in a piston-cylinder device
• Primary form of work in Automobile engines (Internal combustion engines)
• The piston moves back and forth
• Therefore, called as Moving boundary work or simply, boundary work
• How this work can be determined?
• Thermodynamics analysis?
• Very fast process – difficult to trace the equilibrium states and the path
it followed
• By measurement – Indicator diagram
• Whereas, for a quasi-equilibrium process, this displacement
work can be obtained

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Moving Boundary Work (quasi-equilibrium process)
• Consider the gas is enclosed in the piston-cylinder device
• Initial Pressure is P, and total Volume of gas is V and The
surface area of piston is A
• If the piston allowed to move a distance ds in quasi-equilibrium
manner, the differential work done will be

• So, the differential work is the product of absolute pressure P

and the change in volume dV
• Therefore, the moving boundary work is sometimes called the
P dV work

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

 Moving Boundary Work
• Now, P is absolute pressure, which is always positive
• dV is the differential volume, which is positive during an expansion process
(as volume increases) and negative during a compression process (as
volume decreases)
• Therefore, the differential work is positive for an expansion process (Work
output) and negative for a compression process (work input)
• The total boundary work done during the entire process is obtained by
adding all the differential work starting from the initial state to the final
state
• This integral can be evaluated, if we know the functional
relationship between P and V during the process i.e. P = f (V)
should be known.
• This P = f (V) is the equation of process path on a P-V diagram
8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai
Moving Boundary Work
• The quasi-equilibrium expansion process shown in P–V diagram
• Differential area dA = P dV
•

• It reveals that the area under the process curve

on a P-V diagram is equal, in magnitude,
to the work done during a quasi-equilibrium
expansion or compression process of a closed
system.
• (On the P-v diagram, it represents the boundary
work done per unit mass.)

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Moving Boundary Work
• A gas can follow several different paths as it expands
from state 1 to state 2
• As the area under each path is different, the work
done will be different for each process

If work were not a path

function, no cyclic devices
(car engines, power plant)
could operate as power or
work-producing devices.

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Moving Boundary Work for Constant Volume process

• Since rigid tank has constant volume

• So, dV = 0. Hence, Wb = 0.
• Therefore, the boundary work done
during a constant volume process is
always zero.
8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai
Moving Boundary Work for Constant Pressure process

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Moving Boundary Work for Isothermal process

• For an ideal gas at constant temperature T0,

• As

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Moving Boundary Work for Polytropic process
• For actual compression and expansion processes
of gases, the pressure and volume are often related
by
• This type of process is called as Polytropic process
• Work done for such process can be estimated from

•
• ,
• For an ideal gas , this equation can be written as-

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

 Moving Boundary Work

8/13/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Example 1
2

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Example 2

8/12/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai

Example 3

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8/13/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai
 Example 4

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Example 5

8/13/2021 KIIT Deemed to be University Dr Surendra Ghadai