Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Thermal-Fluid Sciences w/EES CD-ROM

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

 

 

This book tries to accomplish what may actually be impossible: provide comprehensive coverage of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer in a single book. This book, which seems to be marketed toward mechanical engineering curricula, is only appropriate for non-ME engineers who need an overview of the thermal-fluid sciences in order to pass licensure exams. Cengel has written fairly well-regarded books on these subjects separately, but it doesn't work in a single volume, especially considering that each individual text is almost the same size as the combined text.
First, the thermo section is by far the best. It provides adequate coverage of most engineering thermo topics. However, it does leave out any discussion of chemical thermodynamics or thermodynamic relations. These omissions won't bother many people, but are significant in that most other thermo books cover them. The second edition includes a chapter on psychrometrics that was apparently dropped for the 3rd. Also, the sections on vapor and gas power systems are a little too simple.
Next, the fluids section is absolutely worthless, especially for mechanical engineers. The fluid statics section is convoluted, the Bernoulli equation is poorly developed, there's no coverage of supersonic or compressible flow, and the section on turbo-machinery (which most books DON'T include) is marginally useful, at best. A crash course in dimensional analysis is included, with mixed results.
The heat transfer section is fairly good, but not as comprehensive as it should be. Notably, the HEAT EQUATION IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Not once is it mentioned. From a historical perspective, the heat equation is the starting place for heat transfer, so its exclusion is inexcusable. Development of empirical relationships for convection coefficients is good, but it feels rushed, and you just learn to look up the appropriate relationship without getting a a qualitative feel for the governing physics. The radiation sections are okay, but are more qualitative than quantitative. Besides the obvious omission of the heat equation, also missing is a dedicated chapter to heat exchangers (important for MEs), any mention of radiation HT in participating media, and numerical methods.
The one bright spot: The appendices. The thermodynamic property tables are some of the easiest to read I've ever seen. I prefer the thermo text by Moran and Shapiro, but I go cross-eyed whenever I try to look up a property in their steam table.
I was forced to use this book for thermo, fluids, and HT. I thought it would be a nice reference afterward, but it hasn't turned out to be. I picked up Moran and Shapiro for thermo, Munson for fluid mechanics, and Incropera-DeWitt for HT, and I've found they're much better for reference purposes. File this book under: Nice try, but no thanks.

Excellent book. A Must-Have for just about all engineers, in particular mechanical engineers. Great overview of a vast array of topics for thermal and fluid engineering applications.

This book is also a great reference once you understand the basics. Offers some details you wouldn't expect in an introductory text and some nice tables in the appendices.

Buy a copy of this book to learn from and then to occupy a well-deserved spot on your bookshelf.

I will begin with the good things. This book contains a LOT of information. The tables are very extensive, and the subject matter is very broad. The derivations are generally easy to follow and I found the text itself even enjoyable to read at times. These things upped my opinion of the book from one star to two. However, the example problems are generally not sufficient to help with the far more complex problems in the back of the chapters. As a further frustration, only about a sixth of the problems include the solutions. The end result is that for a homework one is left leafing through the book in a futile search for more extensive guidance on the very extensive problems, all the while not knowing if you didn't mess up the problem already in the first calculation you made. For example, I have this textbook for my second course in fluid dynamics. For my first homework, I had a three day weekend to complete 3 problems. 30+ work hours later (and one shot weekend) I have no idea if I'm right on the first one and I'm still stuck on the last one. I dislike having to go to reciation, so it's not unusual for me to spend lots of time on problems and reading the book in order to figure out the homeworks on my own. But this book is quite frankly kicking my arse. Considering that this is my second fluids course (I'm an aerospace eng student) you would think I would be better at fluids. However, my first fluids textbook was also a Cengel book, and that book was next to useless as well. My overall conclusion: A great book for reading and catching derivations with lots of good tables and a wide array of topics. But it's a huge frustration waiting to happen if you plan on working the problems/preparing for an exam.

The book arrived on time and in the shape that was advertised.I will continue doing business with this company. Very Good.

I thought this was a very well written, organized book. The concepts were explained very clearly. It was great to finally find an understandable book on this subject; other thermo/fluids books that I have read haven't been as informative and comprehendable.

One of the drawbacks, however, was the fact that the examples presented within the book were very simple and didn't cover the concepts in as much depth as I had hoped. Many complex topics that were in the questions at the end of the chapter hadn't been covered well enough in the preceding text to allow them to be both solved AND understood. Furthermore, there were some thermo/fluid topics that weren't covered in the book at all that I thought should have been (compressible flow, for example). As a result, when I took the course in college, my professor had to print out pages from other thermo books to compensate for this.

Despite this, however, there were many pictures that accompanied the examples and again, as stated above, it was easy to understand. I was very impressed with that, given the abstractness of the subject, and the difficulty that other authors have had explaining it effectively.

The bottom line: It was a great book to learn about the fundamentals. I suppose, according to the title, it has served its purpose. However, if you want to go into depth with this subject, go elsewhere.

I am currently taking an introductory course in thermodynamics. I find this book to be a very interesting read. The book uses both SI units and Imperial units, which at times seem very confusing. There is a lot of information on this book, thus this book is a good starting point to learn about thermodynamics.

shipped in a very reasonable time, was in good condition, price was very fair. Great value