FLUID MECHANICS - THEORY

The differential form of the linear momentum equation

(also known as the Navier-Stokes equations) will be
introduced in this section. Euler's equations for inviscid
flow is also discussed.

Navier-Stokes Equations
The integral form of the linear momentum equation was
discussed in the Linear Momentum Integral Equation
section. Recall, Newton's second law on a differential
fluid element is

F = m a

Newton's Second Law

Click to view movie (19k)

where F is the resultant force acting on the fluid

element (mass = m). a is the acceleration of the fluid
element, and it is given by

Expanding into its Cartesian components yields

There are two types of forces acting on the fluid

element: body force (FB) and surface force (FS).

F = FB + FS
The only body force considered here is the weight of
the fluid element. That is,

FB = m g = m (gx i + gy j + gz k)
Generally, gravity only acts in one direction, but since
the coordinate system is not set, all three terms are
included for the general case. Other body forces, such
as those due to the magnetic and electric fields, can be
fit into this framework, but they are not covered in this
eBook.

The surface forces are due to the stresses exerted on

the sides of the fluid element. There are two types of
stresses applied on the surface: normal stress ( ij) and
shear stress (ij). Normal stress acts perpendicular to
the surface while shear stress is tangential to the
surface. The subscript i refers to the axis normal to the
surface, and the subscript j represents the direction of
the stress. The notation of the stresses is illustrated
further in the animation shown on the left.
Notations for the Stresses
Click to view movie (42k)

All surface forces acting in the x-direction on the fluid

element are shown in the figure. A summation of the
surface forces in the x-direction yields

Note that the stresses are multiplied by the area to

obtain the surface forces. Similarly, the total surface
forces in the y- and z-directions (not shown in figure)
are obtained as

Surface Forces in the x-direction

The resultant surface force is then given as

FS = FSx i + FSy j + FSz k

The mass of the fluid element can be expressed in
terms of its volume and fluid density (m = xyz),
so that the linear momentum equation in Cartesian
coordinates reduces to

For Newtonian fluids, such as water, oil and air, the

shear stress field is symmetric, and it is related to
therate of shear strain in a linear fashion. The results
are (derivation details not given here),

where is the viscosity of the fluid. Notice, the

pressure term, p, only acts normal to the surface for
each element face. Also, the pressure is assumed to be
the same on all three faces, i.e. hydrostatic pressure.
For incompressible flow, the term
is zero based
on the continuity equation. The linear momentum
equations thus become

The above equations are generally referred to as the

Navier-Stokes equations, and commonly written as a
single vector form,

Although the vector form looks simple, this equation is

the core fluid mechanics equations and is an unsteady,
nonlinear, 2nd order, partial differential equation. It is
extremely hard to solve, and only simple 2D problems
have been solved. Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) is most often used to solve the Navier-Stokes
equations.

Euler's Equations
For inviscid flow ( = 0), the Navier-Stokes equations
reduce to

The above equations are known as Euler's equations.

Note that the equations governing inviscid flow have
been simplified tremendously compared to the NavierStokes equations; however, they still cannot be solved
analytically due to the complexity of the nonlinear terms
(i.e., u u/x, v u/y, w u/z, etc.). Hence, in the study
of fluid mechanics, numerical methods such as the
finite element and finite difference methods (along with
the use of computers) are often used to approximate
the fluid flow problems. Euler's equations can be
written in vector form as

Euler's equations can be simplified further to

obtainBernoulli's equation, which is applicable to
steady, incompressible, inviscid flow along a
streamline. A more detailed discussion on this subject
is given in the solutions for the case study presented in
this section.