Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Engineering Thermodynamics

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great (and iconic) book on Thermodynamics. As a student in Mechanical Engineering, I am sure that what I have learned from my Thermodynamics class (and this book, by extension) will be useful. Now, to get into the book:

1. The concepts and theory in this book are expressed in simple language that doesn't require a masters degree to understand.

2. There are many examples and are clearly solved without skipping steps, in both metric and English units. I'm not a huge fan of using English units, but this book goes through the conversion factors (the hardest part) quite clearly and keeps units on all values to make following the examples relatively pain-free.

3. There are a variety of homework problems (usually over 125 per chapter) in both metric and English units. Usually the problems come in pairs; the first problem of a pair will have metric units while the second problem uses English units. As in most texts, the problems get progressively harder, but there are so many problems, that the transition is slow. If you can't figure out, say, problem 8.91, try a problem before it. Usually this will lead you to the correct method of solving 8.91.

4. The only major flaw (and to me, it's a pretty big one), is the lack of answers in the back of the book. There are none in the back of the book, however there are *some* on the book's webpage. Unfortunately, there are only a small fraction of the answers located on the official webpage. TIP: If you look very hard on the internet, there are methods to find worked out solutions.

5. Just before each set of problems at the end of the chapter, there are tables of equations, with explanations of the situations in which to use them. This is really useful when doing the homework or studying.

6. At the end of the book, there are many, many, many tables with thermodynamic data for liquids and gasses, in both English and metric units. There are indexed at the beginning of each appendix which makes it really easy to find the table you're looking for.

I hope this helps.

I took a course in Thermo as an undergrad, but I basically just learned how to solve the textbook problems to the point where I was able to pass the tests, but I never got a good intuitive understanding of the subject.

My major was EE so one term of Thermo was a required course but not in the mainstream of my studies, so I never needed to understand it in any greater depth.

I recently retired from my career as an EE and have been wanting to become more knowledgable about energy, since I think it is probably the toughest science/engineering issue facing society for the forseeable future.

It dawned on me at some point that if I want to be knowledgable about energy, I need to do more than just read books about energy sources, I need to have a decent grounding in those technical disciplines that energy technologies are based on. The most obvious was Thermodynamics, although I decided I should also beef up my Chemistry.

And I realized, by golly, I can learn this stuff, because of my engineering background and the fact that I'm not too old for my brain to be decomposing too badly so far.

For the moment, I am studying this book on Thermo.

I am really happy with this book. They really cover the material with a lot of rigor and give a ton of examples which really help get an intuitive understanding of what the concepts mean for practical systems.

I haven't finished the book, but am far enough along to be able to judge it. Right now I'm in the chapter on Exergy. I don't believe we ever got into that in the 1st term Thermo I took 30 years ago or so. The Exergy concept really makes a lot of sense in tying everything together and providing a comprehensive approach toward evaluating the efficiency of a particular system.

I do wonder about the notation, though. They denote exergy with an "E", which seems like it could lead to its being mixed up with energy.

Wikipedia says that Exergy is denoted by the letter "B". Not sure where that came from but it seems like a good idea to use a completely different letter for it.

Aside from some minor issues like that, this book seems outstanding to me. I gather it is the predominant textbook for thermo these days. I would say it deserves that status.

I am really looking forward to the later chapters I haven't gotten to yet on the various types of engines and turbos and whatnot.

For the material to really sink in, I know I will need to read the book a second time, but the second pass should go quite a bit faster than the first.

This is a very good text book, it is well written and keeps it short and sweet. It gets to the point. One great feature is that it boxes in derivations that are not nessacary to understand, this way you don't get bogged down in a lot of text. There are tons of examples in the book and no mistakes that I could find. You really can read and understand everything from the text, you don't really need a teacher, which is saying alot, because most books are impossible to read and figure out what's going on. I agree the bio part is worthless, but Moran is obviously into that stuff because he always mentioned it in class. It's really not a bad thing...just skip it, who cares if it's in there. Overall if you want a good thermo book, whether it's self taught or in a class, it's a good choice.

Firstly, I'll agree with other reviewers that the book has a very clear style and is very helpful learning how to do thermo calculations.

Most chapters have a few section on concepts and the rest of the chapter is examples. The examples are very clear and after reading through them I was able to do our assigned problems without any problems.

My major issue is with the book's lack of conceptual explanation. It explains concepts in a formulaic fashion. I.e. it gives a formula and explains how to use it and supplies just enough concepts to be able to use the formulas. Take for example chapter 3 where it introduces the first major/complicated concept of the relations between specific volume, T and pressure. All it does is give the graph and than analyzes the graph. Sure it explains very well the relations and how to use them, but there is almost no explanation given as to why they are the way they are.

I'll say again, if you want to be able to do the thermo analyzation and calculation this is a really great book. But, if you want understand why things are the way they are, you'll have to find another more theoretical book.

This is a good undergraduate level book for mechanical engineers (I feel chemical engineers will find this book useless).

I had really good professors for thermodynamics so I might not be the best person to review the book since I understood all what we needed to know. the basic stuff is explained well (1st and 2nd laws, P-v/T-s diagrams, otto/diesel, brayton, rankin, combined cycles, what individual components do, exergy) however, I found some of the topics that a lot of undergraduate classes don't really cover aren't presented in great detail. mostly things dealing with mass transfer (cooling towers, combustion, psychro) I didn't really understand what the hell was going on until i took a mass transfer class.

but i like it. this one time I went to las vegas to marry this book but they said I can't because the book didn't have an ID.

This is indeed a very easy to read/understand thermodynamics book. I am a biomedical engineering undergraduate student with a solid background in calculus (up to multivariable) and differential equations. You don't need differential equations to grasp this text, but I would definitely say you need calculus to fully understand everything. In my opinion, the authors present all of the information very clearly. As a biomedical engineering student, I really liked that they had biomedical connections dispersed throughout each chapter that related thermodynamics concepts to biomedical processes.

This is a fairly good text; however the authors have found it necessary to include silly "Bio-Connections" and "Environment" editorals at 5 to 10 page intervals. These are nothing more than warm-fuzzies for bio-engineers who may be taking a thermo-class, and PC "global warming" editorials that have little technical benefit to teaching the core material. It became particularly infuriating when you see a 3/4 page silly "bio-connections" editorial on fluorocarbon global warming and they in the same section neglect having an explanatory figure on the P-v vapor dome. Or they devote 3/4 page on a "bio-connections" essay on storing bananas in zip-lock bags (trying to connect bio-chem with thermodynamics), and give short shrift to the Kelvin-Plank statement (and only supply a very skimpy 2"x2" figure for the explaining Kelvin-Plank).

The editorial board and tag-along sub-authors damaged this text. Stick with engineering and the fundamentals - and for crying out loud if you want to add "bio", "nano-nano" and carbon credits DON'T do it at the expense of Kelvin and Clausius.

I like the text's general concise-ness, and the problem sets and example problems are pretty good. The Cengel text gives better explanations, but is more wordy.

I am a chemeng student. I highly recommend reading this thermo book before any chemical engineering related thermo books. I've read alot of chem thermo books and Shapiro and Moran's text provides the bedrock I feel is necessary before entering into any of the chemeng thermo books that I have read. If anyone disagrees say so.

Peace!@&

According to my professor this is one of the better text book on subject of Thermodynamics, better yet are the previous editions, the earlier the better.

For those who read critically, think critically, and do the exercises at the end of each chapter, they will get a good grasp on the subject.

This subject is not something you can read about and expect to understand it. One need to read it, do the exercises, and reread it again.

On these ground, this is a great text to study thermodynamics with.

Thermodynamics concerns mainly two parts, in my opinion. The first part concerns with exchange of heat and work, and the second part concerns with equilibrium including both phase equilibrium and reaction equilibrium. The introuction level book focuses on the first part with a brief introduction to the second part. This is what this book does. And it does it well. If you grow out of it and would like to see more, you can then get the one by Sandler, which focuses on the second part. The second part turns out to be a lot more difficult and interesting.

Thermo, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics are closely related subjects. To study only one of the three will inevatabily encounter difficulty. I would recommend the books by Incropera and McDonalds for heat transfer and fluid mechanics repectively for undergraduate level.