A piston cylinder combination contains 2 kg of air at the
ambient temperature of 25C and at the unknown ambient pressure.
To provide a source of cooling on this hot Florida day, the piston
is now pulled up until the air reaches a temperature of -100C.
It can be assumed that the process is a polytropic one with .
What is the work that must be done on the air in the cylinder
to pull up the piston and produce the cold air? The piston must
also do work on the air outside the cylinder, which remains at the
ambient pressure. What is the expression for that work? You do not
have to compute this work, though a smart student could do it.
Two cubic meters of a gas at 200 kPa expands polytropically with
to standard atmospheric pressure. What is the work done by
the gas in the process?
Air in a piston/cylinder combination with an initial volume of 1
m is initially kept at a pressure of 150 kPa by the weight of
the piston and the atmospheric pressure. It expands to 2 m,
at which time the piston hits against a linear spring. The air then
continues to expand to 4 m while the pressure increases to
300 kPa due to the increasing spring force. Find the work done by
the air in the complete process. Draw the diagram very neatly
and graphically show the two parts of the work done by the air.
A piston cylinder combination initially contains 5 L of R-134a
at 10C. Because the piston is light and initially floats on
the R-134a, the initial pressure inside the cylinder is the ambient
100 kPa one. However, if the volume would expand to 6 L, the piston
would hit some stops and the volume could no longer increase any
further. Now the cylinder is heated until the R-134a reaches
50C. Does the piston hit the stops? How do you know? What are
the final pressure and volume? What is the work done by the R-134a
in the process? Give a phase construction of the initial
phase, drawing first. For the later phases 1a and 2, you can
use your knowledge about the earlier phases to locate them. Show
the process line as a thick line in the diagram. Also show the
work graphically in the diagram.