ABSTRACT
In the following, several ideal cycles are discussed. They are “ideal” in the sense that they have been proposed as prototypes of practical cycles, and in the limit, their efciencies approach, but are always less than, a Carnot-cycle efciency. These cycles usually bear the name of the person who either proposed them or developed them, and their composite study represents a large portion of applied thermodynamics. In practice, actual cycles deviate from the ideal because of unavoidable irreversibilities and for other practical reasons. The study of the ideal cycle, however, can and does yield invaluable results that are applicable to real cycles. Additionally, we discuss the actual devices (hardware) used in the practical realization of these ideal cycles. Along with these descriptions, we see where the actual cycles deviate from the “ideal” cycles and the attempts made to make actual cycles approach ideal performance.
