Matlab in Chemical Engineering at CMU

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3D plots of the steam tables

John Kitchin

For fun let's make some 3D plots of the steam tables. We will use the XSteam module to map out the pressure, entropy and temperature of steam, and plot the 3D mapping.

clear all; close all; clc

create vectors that we will calculate T for

P = logspace(-2,3); %bar
S = linspace(0,10);

create meshgrid

these are matrices that map out a plane of P,S space

[xdata,ydata] = meshgrid(P,S);
zdata = zeros(size(xdata));

calculate T for each (p,S) pair in the meshgrids

zdata = arrayfun(@(p,s) XSteam('T_ps',p,s),xdata,ydata);

create the 3D plot

we use a lighted surface plot here

surfl(xdata,ydata,zdata)
xlabel('P (bar)')
ylabel('S (kJ/kg/K)')
zlabel('T (K)')
zlim([0 400])

customize the look of the surface plot

this smooths the faces out

shading interp

colormap pink

Add the saturated vapor and liquid lines, and the critical point

hold all

Tsat = arrayfun(@(p) XSteam('Tsat_p',p),P);
sV = arrayfun(@(p) XSteam('sV_p',p),P);
sL = arrayfun(@(p) XSteam('sL_p',p),P);
plot3(P,sV,Tsat,'r-','linewidth',5)
plot3(P,sL,Tsat,'g-','linewidth',5)

tc = 373.946; % C
pc = 220.584525; % bar
sc =XSteam('sV_p',pc);
plot3(pc,sc,tc,'ro','markerfacecolor','b') % the critical point
legend '' 'sat. vapor' 'sat. liquid' 'critical point'

Warning: Legend not supported for patches with FaceColor 'interp' 

Summary

There are lots of options in making 3D plots. They look nice, and from the right perspective can help see how different properties are related. Compare this graph to the one in Post 1484 , where isobars had to be plotted in the 2d graph.

% categories: plotting
% tags: thermodynamics

Published with MATLAB® 7.12