ClosedSystem: a new educational software to study the first law of thermodynamics in closed systems using Matlab

This paper presents the development of a new educational software to study the first law of thermodynamics in some case studies of closed systems using Matlab. The fundamental equation used in the software is presented, and the results obtained by the ClosedSystem software for a case study of a cylinder-piston device with springs and a cylinder-piston device are analyzed in detail. In addition, the accuracy of the data was demonstrated by comparing the program outputs with the manual calculations of 34 undergraduates mechanical engineering students from Universidad del Atlántico, obtaining the higher absolute error of 0.065% and 1.12% for the two educative problems presented above respectively. Finally, in order to analyze the main parameters involving in the Energy's balance of these processes a complete parametric study was developed for each case with the assistance of the new software. 1076 Miguel Romero Di Biasi et al.