Introduction

 The cash flow is fundamental to every economic study. Cash flows occur in many configurations and amounts—isolated single values, series that are uniform, and series that increase or decrease by constant amounts or constant percentages. This chapter develops derivations for all the commonly used engineering economy factors that take the time value of money into account. The application of factors is illustrated using their mathematical forms and a standard notation format. Spreadsheet functions are used in order to rapidly work with cash flow series and to perform sensitivity analysis.