Kattner, U.
(2017),
Thermodynamics and Phase Diagrams, Encyclopedia of Materials
(Accessed December 13, 2024)
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Thermodynamics and Phase Diagrams
Published
Author(s)
Abstract
Thermodynamics is a field of physics and chemistry. It uses mathematics to describe changes in energy and entropy (disorder) of a material that is subject to mechanical, thermal or chemical action. It is most frequently used to describe the conditions that lead to minimization of energy and thereby predict the equililbrium-state of the material. Sometimes, the difference between the free energies of the current state and the equilibrium state is used to give the temporal rate at which a system approaches equilibrium. In its simplest form, thermodynamics neglect non-hydrostatic stress, surface energy and many other things. Then it is possibole to simply describe the energy of a system to be minimized is the free energy. The enthalpy (or heat content) and the density of a material may also be described with thermodynamics. In many physical processes, it is useful to consider a system to be at equilibrium in small regions, while radients on a larger length scale may still exist.Citation
Encyclopedia of Materials
Pub Type
Encyclopedias
Keywords
Phase Diagrams, Processing, Thermodynamics
Citation
Issues
If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.
Created February 19, 2017