Fluid mechanics is that branch of physics concerned with

the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them.[1]: 3 It has
applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical,
and biomedical engineering, as well as geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics,
and biology.

It can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; and fluid dynamics, the study of
the effect of forces on fluid motion.[1]: 3 It is a branch of continuum mechanics, a subject
which models matter without using the information that it is made out of atoms; that is, it
models matter from a macroscopic viewpoint rather than from microscopic.

Fluid mechanics, especially fluid dynamics, is an active field of research, typically

mathematically complex. Many problems are partly or wholly unsolved and are best
addressed by numerical methods, typically using computers. A modern discipline,
called computational fluid dynamics (CFD), is devoted to this approach.[2] Particle image
velocimetry, an experimental method for visualizing and analyzing fluid flow, also takes
advantage of the highly visual nature of fluid flow.

History[edit]

Main article: History of fluid mechanics

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of fluid and continuum mechanics.

The study of fluid mechanics goes back at least to the days of ancient Greece,
when Archimedes investigated fluid statics and buoyancy and formulated his famous law
known now as the Archimedes' principle, which was published in his work On Floating
Bodies—generally considered to be the first major work on fluid mechanics. Iranian
scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni and later Al-Khazini applied experimental scientific methods to
fluid mechanics.[3] Rapid advancement in fluid mechanics began with Leonardo da
Vinci (observations and experiments), Evangelista Torricelli (invented the barometer), Isaac
Newton (investigated viscosity) and Blaise Pascal (researched hydrostatics,
formulated Pascal's law), and was continued by Daniel Bernoulli with the introduction of
mathematical fluid dynamics in Hydrodynamica (1739).

Inviscid flow was further analyzed by various mathematicians (Jean le Rond

d'Alembert, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Siméon Denis Poisson) and
viscous flow was explored by a multitude of engineers including Jean Léonard Marie
Poiseuille and Gotthilf Hagen. Further mathematical justification was provided by Claude-
Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes in the Navier–Stokes equations, and boundary
layers were investigated (Ludwig Prandtl, Theodore von Kármán), while various scientists
such as Osborne Reynolds, Andrey Kolmogorov, and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor advanced the
understanding of fluid viscosity and turbulence.

Main branches[edit]

Fluid statics[edit]
Main article: Fluid statics

Fluid statics or hydrostatics is the branch of fluid mechanics that studies fluids at rest. It
embraces the study of the conditions under which fluids are at rest in stable equilibrium; and
is contrasted with fluid dynamics, the study of fluids in motion. Hydrostatics offers physical
explanations for many phenomena of everyday life, such as why atmospheric
pressure changes with altitude, why wood and oil float on water, and why the surface of
water is always level whatever the shape of its container. Hydrostatics is fundamental
to hydraulics, the engineering of equipment for storing, transporting and using fluids. It is
also relevant to some aspects of geophysics and astrophysics (for example, in
understanding plate tectonics and anomalies in the Earth's gravitational field),
to meteorology, to medicine (in the context of blood pressure), and many other fields.

Fluid dynamics[edit]
Main article: Fluid dynamics

Fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the science
of liquids and gases in motion.[4] Fluid dynamics offers a systematic structure—which
underlies these practical disciplines—that embraces empirical and semi-empirical laws
derived from flow measurement and used to solve practical problems. The solution to a fluid
dynamics problem typically involves calculating various properties of the fluid, such
as velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, as functions of space and time. It has several
subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics[5][6][7][8] (the study of air and other gases in
motion) and hydrodynamics[9][10] (the study of liquids in motion). Fluid dynamics has a wide
range of applications, including calculating forces and movements on aircraft, determining
the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting evolving weather patterns,
understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modeling explosions. Some fluid-dynamical
principles are used in traffic engineering and crowd dynamics.

Relationship to continuum mechanics[edit]

Fluid mechanics is a subdiscipline of continuum mechanics, as illustrated in the following

table.

Elasticity
Describes materials that return to their rest
shape after applied stresses are removed.
Solid mechanics
The study of the
physics of continuous Plasticity
materials with a defined Describes materials

rest shape. that permanently

Continuum deform after a
mechanics sufficient applied Rheology
The study of the stress. The study of materials
physics of
with both solid and
continuous
materials Non-Newtonian fluid fluid characteristics.

Fluid mechanics Do not undergo strain

The study of the rates proportional to
physics of continuous the applied shear

materials which deform stress.

when subjected to a
force. Newtonian fluids undergo strain rates
proportional to the applied shear stress.

In a mechanical view, a fluid is a substance that does not support shear stress; that is why a
fluid at rest has the shape of its containing vessel. A fluid at rest has no shear stress.

Assumptions[edit]
 Balance for some integrated fluid quantity in a control
volume enclosed by a control surface.

The assumptions inherent to a fluid mechanical treatment of a physical system can be

expressed in terms of mathematical equations. Fundamentally, every fluid mechanical system
is assumed to obey:

 Conservation of mass
 Conservation of energy
 Conservation of momentum
 The continuum assumption

For example, the assumption that mass is conserved means that for any fixed control
volume (for example, a spherical volume)—enclosed by a control surface—the rate of
change of the mass contained in that volume is equal to the rate at which mass is passing
through the surface from outside to inside, minus the rate at which mass is passing
from inside to outside. This can be expressed as an equation in integral form over the control
volume.[11]: 74

The continuum assumption is an idealization of continuum mechanics under which fluids

can be treated as continuous, even though, on a microscopic scale, they are composed
of molecules. Under the continuum assumption, macroscopic (observed/measurable)
properties such as density, pressure, temperature, and bulk velocity are taken to be well-
defined at "infinitesimal" volume elements—small in comparison to the characteristic length
scale of the system, but large in comparison to molecular length scale. Fluid properties can
vary continuously from one volume element to another and are average values of the
molecular properties. The continuum hypothesis can lead to inaccurate results in applications
like supersonic speed flows, or molecular flows on nano scale.[12] Those problems for which
the continuum hypothesis fails can be solved using statistical mechanics. To determine
whether or not the continuum hypothesis applies, the Knudsen number, defined as the ratio of
the molecular mean free path to the characteristic length scale, is evaluated. Problems with
Knudsen numbers below 0.1 can be evaluated using the continuum hypothesis, but molecular
approach (statistical mechanics) can be applied to find the fluid motion for larger Knudsen
numbers.

Navier–Stokes equations[edit]

Main article: Navier–Stokes equations

The Navier–Stokes equations (named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel
Stokes) are differential equations that describe the force balance at a given point within a

fluid. For an incompressible fluid with vector velocity field , the Navier–Stokes
equations are[13][14][15][16]

These differential equations are the analogues for deformable materials to Newton's
equations of motion for particles – the Navier–Stokes equations describe changes

in momentum (force) in response to pressure and viscosity, parameterized by

the kinematic viscosity . Occasionally, body forces, such as the gravitational force or
Lorentz force are added to the equations.

Solutions of the Navier–Stokes equations for a given physical problem must be sought
with the help of calculus. In practical terms, only the simplest cases can be solved exactly
in this way. These cases generally involve non-turbulent, steady flow in which
the Reynolds number is small. For more complex cases, especially those
involving turbulence, such as global weather systems, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics and
many more, solutions of the Navier–Stokes equations can currently only be found with
the help of computers. This branch of science is called computational fluid
dynamics.[17][18][19][20][21]

Inviscid and viscous fluids[edit]

An inviscid fluid has no viscosity, . In practice, an inviscid flow is an idealization,
one that facilitates mathematical treatment. In fact, purely inviscid flows are only known
to be realized in the case of superfluidity. Otherwise, fluids are generally viscous, a
property that is often most important within a boundary layer near a solid
surface,[22] where the flow must match onto the no-slip condition at the solid. In some
cases, the mathematics of a fluid mechanical system can be treated by assuming that the
fluid outside of boundary layers is inviscid, and then matching its solution onto that for a
thin laminar boundary layer.

For fluid flow over a porous boundary, the fluid velocity can be discontinuous between
the free fluid and the fluid in the porous media (this is related to the Beavers and Joseph
condition). Further, it is useful at low subsonic speeds to assume that gas
is incompressible—that is, the density of the gas does not change even though the speed
and static pressure change.

Newtonian versus non-Newtonian fluids[edit]

A Newtonian fluid (named after Isaac Newton) is defined to be a fluid whose shear
stress is linearly proportional to the velocity gradient in the direction perpendicular to the
plane of shear. This definition means regardless of the forces acting on a fluid,
it continues to flow. For example, water is a Newtonian fluid, because it continues to
display fluid properties no matter how much it is stirred or mixed. A slightly less rigorous
definition is that the drag of a small object being moved slowly through the fluid is
proportional to the force applied to the object. (Compare friction). Important fluids, like
water as well as most gasses, behave—to good approximation—as a Newtonian fluid
under normal conditions on Earth.[11]: 145

By contrast, stirring a non-Newtonian fluid can leave a "hole" behind. This will gradually
fill up over time—this behavior is seen in materials such as pudding, oobleck,
or sand (although sand isn't strictly a fluid). Alternatively, stirring a non-Newtonian fluid
can cause the viscosity to decrease, so the fluid appears "thinner" (this is seen in non-
drip paints). There are many types of non-Newtonian fluids, as they are defined to be
something that fails to obey a particular property—for example, most fluids with long
molecular chains can react in a non-Newtonian manner.[11]: 145
Equations for a Newtonian fluid[edit]
Main article: Newtonian fluid

The constant of proportionality between the viscous stress tensor and the velocity
gradient is known as the viscosity. A simple equation to describe incompressible
Newtonian fluid behavior is

where

is the shear stress exerted by the fluid ("drag"),

is the fluid viscosity—a constant of proportionality, and

is the velocity gradient perpendicular to the direction of shear.

For a Newtonian fluid, the viscosity, by definition, depends only

on temperature, not on the forces acting upon it. If the fluid
is incompressible the equation governing the viscous stress (in Cartesian
coordinates) is

where

is the shear stress on the face of a fluid element in the direction

is the velocity in the direction

is the direction coordinate.

If the fluid is not incompressible the general form for the

viscous stress in a Newtonian fluid is
where is the second viscosity coefficient (or
bulk viscosity). If a fluid does not obey this relation,
it is termed a non-Newtonian fluid, of which there are
several types. Non-Newtonian fluids can be either
plastic, Bingham plastic, pseudoplastic, dilatant,
thixotropic, rheopectic, viscoelastic.

In some applications, another rough broad division

among fluids is made: ideal and non-ideal fluids. An
ideal fluid is non-viscous and offers no resistance
whatsoever to a shearing force. An ideal fluid really
does not exist, but in some calculations, the
assumption is justifiable. One example of this is the
flow far from solid surfaces. In many cases, the
viscous effects are concentrated near the solid
boundaries (such as in boundary layers) while in
regions of the flow field far away from the
boundaries the viscous effects can be neglected and
the fluid there is treated as it were inviscid (ideal
flow). When the viscosity is neglected, the term

containing the viscous stress tensor in the

Navier–Stokes equation vanishes. The equation
reduced in this form is called the Euler equation.