TY - JOUR
TI - Advanced thermodynamics metrics for sustainability assessments of open engineering systems
AU - Sekulić Dušan P
AU - Sankara Jayasankar
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2006
VL - 10
IS - 1
SP - 125
EP - 140
PT - Article
AB - This paper offers a verification of the following hypotheses. Advanced thermodynamics metrics based on entropy generation assessments indicate the level of sustainability of transient open systems, such as in manufacturing or process industries. The indicator of sustainability may be related to particular property uniformity during materials processing. In such a case the property uniformity would indicate systems’ distance from equilibrium i.e., from the sustainable energy utilization level. This idea is applied to a selected state-of-the-art manufacturing process. The system under consideration involves thermal processing of complex aluminum structures during controlled atmosphere brazing for a near-net-shape mass production of compact heat exchangers.