In: Physics
What is the importance of the carnot cycle?What is it for?
Sadi Carnot was a French physicist who proposed an “ideal” cycle for a heat engine in 1824. Carnot cycle explains the working of a heat engine that uses reversible processes. According to Carnot, a cycle that is comprised of completely reversible processes only, would give the maximum efficiency i.e., maximum amount of net work for a given heat input.
Carnot cycle consists of four reversible processes. Two of these processes are reversible adiabatic processes (2 and 4) and the rest two other processes are reversible isotherms (1 and 3). The p-V diagram of a Carnot engine is shown below:
The efficiency of an ideal Carnot engine is maximum and is given by the simple expression,