A polytropic process is a thermodynamic process that obeys the relation:
where p is the pressure, v is specific volume, n, the polytropic index, is any real number, and C is a constant. The polytropic process equation is particularly useful for characterizing expansion and compression processes which include heat transfer. This equation can accurately characterize a very wide range of thermodynamic processes, that range from n=0 to n= which covers, n=0 (isobaric), n=1 (isothermal), n=γ (isentropic), n= (isochoric) processes and all values of n in between. Hence the equation is polytropic in the...