Introduction to Fluid Mechanics

AE 225 Incompressible Fluid Mechanics

Aniruddha Sinha

Department of Aerospace Engineering

IIT Bombay

Preview
Fluid mechanics is a very visual (and mathematical) subject
Equations are sometimes too complicated to get a feel
Several flow variables to keep track of over large domains

Cavitation on ship-propellera

Wing-tip vorticesb

Look up gallery of fluid motion: http://gfm.aps.org

Applied research lab, Penn State

www.sunlakesaeroclub.org
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Preview

An example of Leonardo da Vincis sketches of turbulent flow

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Why study fluid mechanics?

It is an important subject in physics
It dominates physical phenomena, on all macroscopic (non-quantum)

length scales of the known universe

In physical and natural science
Fluid is responsible for environment, i.e. weather
Life cannot exist without fluids: we breathe air (a fluid), drink water (a

fluid); we are mostly fluid

In technology
Fluid is useful in energy conversion
Fluid matters for transportation
It affects recreation (swimming)
It affects entertainment (music)

Fluid mechanics (aerodynamics) rules Aerospace Engineering

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Fluid mechanics in pure sciences

Atmospheric sciences & oceanography
Global circulation (e.g. Monsoon)
Large-scale weather patterns (prediction of tornado, hurricane, pollutant

ion levels)
Climate change models

Geophysics
Understanding of earthquakes, volcanoes (thermally-driven fluid motion)
Understanding of Earths magnetic field (motion of Earths molten core)

Astrophysics
Galactic structure and clustering
Formation and death of celestial bodies

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Example: weather phenomenon in the lab

Lodovica Illari, MIT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWdKVpQ94Ns)

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Fluid mechanics in pure sciences (contd.)

Biological sciences
Blood circulation
Eye function
Fish swimming
Kidney function
Cellular processes

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Example: fluid mechanics of fish swimming

Borazjani et al., U. Minn. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiBYMLNR7Y)

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Fluid mechanics in technology

Internal/external combustion engines: steam turbines, gas turbines,

scramjet, rocket engines

Waste disposal and pollution disposal: chemical treatment,

incineration, sewage transport and treatment

Renewable energy: Water turbines, wind turbines, solar power
Transport of fluids and gases: Pipelines for crude oil, natural gas,

irrigation
Transportation: aircraft, road vehicles, high speed trains, space vehicles
Comfort: Heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems
Artificial organs: artificial hearts, kidney dialysis machines, insulin

pumps
Chemicals: dyes, paints, drugs

Lecture notes of Prof. G. R. Shevare

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Example: gas turbine animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlj7Oyhpfc
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Brief history: The ancients

Archimedes Eureka
(3rd century BC)

Roman aqueducts (1st century BC)

Intuitively fluid is anything which flows.

With this as an understanding, plenty of empirical information existed over
centuries
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Brief history: The giants

The first fluid mechanics equation: Bernoullis equation (introduced by L.

Euler and the Bernoullis)

Modern fluid mechanics: due to contributions by Newton, Cauchy, Euler,

Navier, Stokes, Reynolds, Prandtl, Taylor

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Methods of studying fluid mechanics

In the last two centuries, fluid mechanics, like any other science, was
studied using only two approaches: theoretical and experimental
Theoretical fluid mechanics (then called hydrodynamics) was pursued

by mathematicians using analytical methods

Experimental fluid mechanics (then called hydraulics) was mostly

experimental study of water

The theoretical fluid mechanics and experimental theories sometimes
produced contradictory results.
Theoretic study now means exploring the important phenomena and arriving
at the mathematical correlations between factors affecting fluid flow
E.g., what is the essential physics (out of the entirety of mind-boggling

details) that gives rise to the noise heard from jet engines?

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Experimental fluid mechanics

Experimental fluid mechanics relies on sensing and measuring the flow

quantities rather than the mathematical expressions for them

Experimental methods have matured with advances in accurate

transducers, data acquisition and data archival methodologies

There are instruments which can measure e.g.,
3-components of velocity at a point at 100s of kHz rate
3-components of velocity over a volumetric domain at kHz rate
Pressure on a surface as an image using pressure-sensitive paint

3-C hot-wirea
a

dantecdynamics.com

Particle image velocimetryb Pressure-sensitive paintc

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle image velocimetry

Gregory, AIAA 2004-0294

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Computational fluid dynamics

As the computing power increased, limitations of data processing of

human beings could be overcome.

Laws of physics can be applied with almost no assumptions.
Large number of mathematical operations can be carried out

systematically.
Effects of various parameters can be verified with existing correlations.
Experimental validation of CFD results is still very very important
Comparison of CFD of supersonic jet with experimentsa

Computed vorticity magnitude

a

Experimental flow visualization

Gaitonde & Samimy, PoF, 2011

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Approach to solving problems in fluid mechanics

Reality
Idealized
problems:
pipes, plates

Components
Wings, turbine
blade passage
Experimental
fluid mechanics

Analytical
fluid mechanics

Fluid m/c:
engine,
aircraft

Math models for

fluid motion

Computational
fluid dynamics (CFD)

Lecture notes of Prof. G. R. Shevare

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