On Steam Tables, Psych Charts, Code, and Public Domain

Factual Questions
1

This question has a few different aspects to it, so I will ask them in sections.

  1. My main question: First, are there public domain equations that produce the IAPWS-95 formulated steam tables?

  2. To what extent are steam tables copyrightable information, anyhow? I mean, the enthalpy of steam at 400 F and 15 psia is a description of a specific scientific property of a substance. Is that copyrightable?I mean, would it be possible to create a giant look-up table from published steam table data?

  3. For that matter, is generating a curve from the tables a copyright violation? It seems to me that a strict interpretation might claim that by generating a curve to duplicate the steam tables, you are “reverse engineering” them, but I really don’t think so.

  4. Are there similar public domain equations for psychrometric properties of air, or of gas properties - such as for ammonia, CO[sub]2[/sub], nitrogen, and R-134a?

  5. Are the IAPWS-95 steam tables the “best” ones anyways? I have been told anecdotally that Eastern European engineers don’t use them because they think they are “flawed”. But I have no real evidence.

Anyhow - the main purpose of this is that I’m developing a freeware, public-domain algorithm science and engineering tool, and am at the point where I really need steam tables and gas tables. I’m hoping to find equations I can legally use in the form of y=f(a,b,c…), without me having to derive them from scratch. I don’t need code, but if true public domain code is available, I would like to look at that as well.

TIA,
Una

2

I don’t know exactly about the legality of it, but i think if you use published data for education and information (only) purpose only, its okay (although this is debateable).

I had made my own air psychrometric program when I was back in college using Fortran 77 :D. It used to be pretty accurate.

Another, thing which may work out in your favor is that freeware is usually provided as is without any guarantees. So no one can use it for plant/design guarantees.

This issue is highly controversial. For example, if a professor gives a problem to the students from a book - is it a copyright infringement ? I think, at least in the education comunity, openness is good, but at the same time authors deserve their royalty too.

3

I think you can use data published in an engineering handbook, such as steam tables, to design a steam power system, or the data on strength of materials to design structures, etc., etc. However, I don’t think you can copy the data from a handbook, put it into a different form and sell it in another handbook.