Begell House Publishers, a US-based publisher of scholarly publications in science and engineering, has announced the launch of Thermopedia, (www.thermopedia.com), a new web-based research tool. The product serves as a guide to concepts and gateway to a number of journals and reference works in the field of heat and mass transfer, fluid flow and thermodynamics. Thermopedia's video demonstrations and animated 3DMax images in selected works are expected to help illustrate specific concepts, enhancing the classroom experience for both faculty and students.
Beyond the fundamental topics, details of industrial processes and plants as well as equipment involving fluid mechanics and heat transfer are also included. Such extensive and wide coverage is projected to be appropriate for practitioners in general engineering (chemical, civil, mechanical, industrial); chemical process design and operation; environmental; power generation (conventional and nuclear) and energy use and conservation. Forward and backward links, an A-Z index and an advanced search engine that provides a view of the entire literature database via a "Map" feature (www.thermopedia.com/map) are seen to make navigating easy.
Thermopedia is based on the International Encyclopedia of Heat and Mass Transfer (IEHMT), published in 1997 and widely used by practitioners. The structure of IEHMT made it ideally suitable for its redesign as both a web-based product and a gateway to other resources, according to the publisher.
Libraries have the option to take a 30-day free trial and four flexible subscription options are available. A number of enhancements are already planned such as eLectures - a series of PowerPoint based teaching tools, links to other publishers' content and conversion of additional data into multimedia graphs.
