quinn-p-mchugh/clausius-android-app

An Android app enabling students & engineers to acquire the thermodynamic properties of water for a given thermodynamic state with just the touch of a finger.

Clausius

Clausius is a visual and intuitive Android app enabling students, teachers, and engineers alike to acquire the thermodynamic properties of water for a given thermodynamic state with just the touch of a finger. By using the app with a tablet device, users can touch an on-screen temperature-entropy chart and instantly retrieve all the thermodynamic properties of water associated with that point.

Motivation

Current methods of retrieving the thermodynamic properties of water at a given thermodynamic state are tedious at best. To retrieve these values, one can use the following methods:

• Refer to a temperature-entropy diagram and manually estimate or calculate the thermodynamic properties, such as temperature and enthalpy, at a specified point. -- This method is good for developing an understanding of the relationships between properties, but hand calculation is often slow.
• Refer to steam tables, a collection of several large tables containing thermodynamic properties associated with a range of thermodynamic states -- Although accurate, this method does not provide a visual for developing a good understanding of the relationships between properties and only values for specific thermodynamic states can be retrieved.
• Use an online thermodynamic property calculator -- Highly accurate and flexible, but again, this does not does not provide a visual for developing a good understanding of the relationship between properties.

Clausius was first developed as an iOS app. This project seeks to develop an Android version of that app to enable use on a wider range of devices.

Disclaimer

Clausius should be only be used as an educational tool for practicing thermodynamics calculations or understanding the relationships between properties. It should NOT be used in a professional setting to inform conclusions about any kind of thermodynamic process. To calculate thermophysical properties of various fluids, we recommend using the Thermophysical Properties of Fluid Systems Calculator from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) instead.

Build Status

This app is currently under development. To see the a list of project to-dos, please refer to the To Do section.

Code Style

This project uses the Google's Java Style Guide as a guideline.

Installation

Using GitHub's GitHub Desktop or Git, clone this repository to your local computer and open it using the Android Studio IDE. From there, you can make changes to your local project and commit changes using the "VCS" menu in Android Studio.

For more information, please take a look at this article which provides a basic overview of version control in Android Studio.

To Do

• Write this README
• Resolve edge cases with temperature-entropy chart
• Implement P-h diagram into app
• Implement P-v diagram into app

Contribute

Pull requests are always welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Credits

Special thanks to Dr. Smitesh Bakrania for coming up with the idea for this app and providing the thermodynamic property data necessary for implementing the app's basic functionality.

Thanks to Quinn McHugh for creating the initial version of the app.

License

Although this project is open source, it does not have a license at this time.