An overview of the units of measurement used in the Steam and Condensate Loop including temperature, pressure, density, volume, heat, work and energy.
Use the quick links below to take you to the main sections of this tutorial:
Throughout the engineering industries, many different definitions and units have been proposed and used for mechanical and thermal properties.
The problems this caused led to the development of an agreed international system of units (or SI units: Système International d'Unités). In the SI system there are seven well-defined base units from which the units of other properties can be derived, and these will be used throughout the Steam Engineering Tutorials.
The SI base units include length (in metres), mass (in kilograms), time (in seconds) and temperature (in kelvin). The first three will hopefully need no further explanation, while the latter will be discussed in more detail later.
The other SI base units are electric current (in amperes), amount of substance (in moles) and luminous intensity (in candela). These may be familiar to readers with a background in electronics, chemistry and physics respectively, but have little relevance to steam engineering nor the contents of these tutorials.
Table 2.1.1 shows the derived units that are relevant to this subject, all of which should be familiar to those with any general engineering background. Some of these quantities have been assigned special names after famous pioneers in the development of science and engineering.
