C glossary entries

The ability of a component or conductor arrangement to store electric charge for a given voltage difference.

Carnot efficiency is the maximum thermal efficiency achievable by any heat engine operating reversibly between a hot reservoir at temperature T_H and a cold reservoir at temperature T_C, equal to one minus the ratio of the cold to hot absolute temperatures.

The formation, growth, and collapse of vapor cavities in a liquid when local pressure falls near or below the liquid vapor pressure.

The point on a body or surface where the resultant pressure force can be considered to act for an equivalent net force and moment.

A vessel or system designed to carry out a chemical reaction under controlled conditions of flow, temperature, pressure, composition, mixing, and residence time.

A protective switching device designed to interrupt current under overload, short-circuit, fault, or switching conditions.

Clinical engineering applies engineering methods to the safe and effective management of medical technology in healthcare environments.

Control action in which measured output is fed back, compared with a reference, and used to adjust the input to reduce error or shape system behaviour.

The maximum compressive stress a material, specimen, or structural element can withstand before crushing, yielding, instability, or unacceptable deformation.

Contaminant transport is the movement, spreading, retention, and transformation of contaminants through environmental or engineered media.

A conservation relation stating that mass is neither created nor destroyed within a defined flow system, except through specified sources or sinks.

Convex optimization is the subfield of optimization concerned with problems in which the objective function is convex and the feasible set is a convex set, ensuring that every local minimum is a global minimum and that efficient algorithms can find the exact solution.

The speed at which a material deteriorates by chemical or electrochemical attack under specified environmental and service conditions.

A project scheduling method that identifies the longest dependency path through planned activities and therefore the sequence controlling project duration.