fluid mechanics

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differential manometer, Torricellian barometer, and siphon

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Key People:
 
Sir James Lighthill Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 1st Baronet Sir Horace Lamb Henri-Émile
Bazin Henri Pitot
Related Topics:
 
aerodynamics Archimedes’ principle Navier-Stokes equation austausch
coefficient magnetohydrodynamics
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fluid mechanics, science concerned with the response of fluids to forces exerted upon
them. It is a branch of classical physics with applications of great importance in
hydraulic and aeronautical engineering, chemical engineering, meteorology, and
zoology.

The most familiar fluid is of course water, and an encyclopaedia of the 19th century
probably would have dealt with the subject under the separate headings of hydrostatics,
the science of water at rest, and hydrodynamics, the science of water
in motion. Archimedes founded hydrostatics in about 250 BC when, according to legend,
he leapt out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse crying “Eureka!”;
it has undergone rather little development since. The foundations of hydrodynamics, on
the other hand, were not laid until the 18th century when mathematicians such
as Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli began to explore the consequences, for a
virtually continuous medium like water, of the dynamic principles that Newton had
enunciated for systems composed of discrete particles. Their work was continued in the
19th century by several mathematicians and physicists of the first rank, notably G.G.
Stokes and William Thomson. By the end of the century explanations had been found
for a host of intriguing phenomena having to do with the flow of water through tubes
and orifices, the waves that ships moving through water leave behind them, raindrops
on windowpanes, and the like. There was still no proper understanding, however, of
problems as fundamental as that of water flowing past a fixed obstacle and exerting
a drag force upon it; the theory of potential flow, which worked so well in other contexts,
yielded results that at relatively high flow rates were grossly at variance with
experiment. This problem was not properly understood until 1904, when the German
physicist Ludwig Prandtl introduced the concept of the boundary layer (see
below Hydrodynamics: Boundary layers and separation). Prandtl’s career continued
into the period in which the first manned aircraft were developed. Since that time, the
flow of air has been of as much interest to physicists and engineers as the flow of water,
and hydrodynamics has, as a consequence, become fluid dynamics. The term
fluid mechanics, as used here, embraces both fluid dynamics and the subject still
generally referred to as hydrostatics.

One other representative of the 20th century who deserves mention here besides
Prandtl is Geoffrey Taylor of England. Taylor remained a classical physicist while most
of his contemporaries were turning their attention to the problems of atomic structure
and quantum mechanics, and he made several unexpected and important discoveries in
the field of fluid mechanics. The richness of fluid mechanics is due in large part to a
term in the basic equation of the motion of fluids which is nonlinear—i.e., one that
involves the fluid velocity twice over. It is characteristic of systems described by
nonlinear equations that under certain conditions they become unstable and begin
behaving in ways that seem at first sight to be totally chaotic. In the case of fluids,
chaotic behaviour is very common and is called turbulence. Mathematicians have now
begun to recognize patterns in chaos that can be analyzed fruitfully, and this
development suggests that fluid mechanics will remain a field of active research well
into the 21st century. (For a discussion of the concept of chaos, see physical science,
principles of.)

Fluid mechanics is a subject with almost endless ramifications, and the account that
follows is necessarily incomplete. Some knowledge of the basic properties of fluids will
be needed; a survey of the most relevant properties is given in the next section. For
further details, see thermodynamics and liquid.

Britannica Quiz

Physics and Natural Law

Basic properties of fluids

Fluids are not strictly continuous media in the way that all the successors of Euler and
Bernoulli have assumed, for they are composed of discrete molecules. The molecules,
however, are so small and, except in gases at very low pressures, the number of
molecules per millilitre is so enormous that they need not be viewed as
individual entities. There are a few liquids, known as liquid crystals, in which the
molecules are packed together in such a way as to make the properties of the medium
locally anisotropic, but the vast majority of fluids (including air and water) are isotropic.
In fluid mechanics, the state of an isotropic fluid may be completely described by
defining its mean mass per unit volume, or density (ρ), its temperature (T), and its
velocity (v) at every point in space, and just what the connection is between these
macroscopic properties and the positions and velocities of individual molecules is of no
direct relevance.

A word perhaps is needed about the difference between gases and liquids, though the

difference is easier to perceive than to describe. In gases the molecules are sufficiently
far apart to move almost independently of one another, and gases tend to expand to fill
any volume available to them. In liquids the molecules are more or less in contact, and
the short-range attractive forces between them make them cohere; the molecules are
moving too fast to settle down into the ordered arrays that are characteristic of solids,
but not so fast that they can fly apart. Thus, samples of liquid can exist as drops or as
jets with free surfaces, or they can sit in beakers constrained only by gravity, in a way
that samples of gas cannot. Such samples may evaporate in time, as molecules one by
one pick up enough speed to escape across the free surface and are not replaced. The
lifetime of liquid drops and jets, however, is normally long enough for evaporation to be
ignored.
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There are two sorts of stress that may exist in any solid or fluid medium, and the
difference between them may be illustrated by reference to a brick held between two
hands. If the holder moves his hands toward each other, he exerts pressure on the brick;
if he moves one hand toward his body and the other away from it, then he exerts what is
called a shear stress. A solid substance such as a brick can withstand stresses of both
types, but fluids, by definition, yield to shear stresses no matter how small these stresses
may be. They do so at a rate determined by the fluid’s viscosity. This property, about
which more will be said later, is a measure of the friction that arises
when adjacent layers of fluid slip over one another. It follows that the shear stresses are
everywhere zero in a fluid at rest and in equilibrium, and from this it follows that the
pressure (that is, force per unit area) acting perpendicular to all planes in the fluid is the
same irrespective of their orientation (Pascal’s law). For an isotropic fluid in equilibrium
there is only one value of the local pressure (p) consistent with the stated values for ρ
and T. These three quantities are linked together by what is called the equation of
state for the fluid.

For gases at low pressures the equation of state is simple and well known. It is

where R is the universal gas constant (8.3

joules per degree Celsius per mole) and M is the molar mass, or an average molar mass
if the gas is a mixture; for air, the appropriate average is about 29 × 10−3 kilogram per
mole. For other fluids knowledge of the equation of state is often incomplete. Except
under very extreme conditions, however, all one needs to know is how the
density changes when the pressure is changed by a small amount, and this is described
by the compressibility of the fluid—either the isothermal compressibility, βT, or
the adiabatic compressibility, βS, according to circumstance. When an element of fluid is
compressed, the work done on it tends to heat it up. If the heat has time to drain away to
the surroundings and the temperature of the fluid remains essentially unchanged
throughout, then βT is the relevant quantity. If virtually none of the heat escapes, as is
more commonly the case in flow problems because the thermal conductivity of most
fluids is poor, then the flow is said to be adiabatic, and βS is needed instead. (The S refers
to entropy, which remains constant in an adiabatic process provided that it takes place
slowly enough to be treated as “reversible” in the thermodynamic sense.) For gases that
obey equation (118), it is evident that p and ρ are proportional to one another in an

isothermal process, and

In reversible adiabatic processes for such gases, however, the temperature rises on
compression at a rate such that and

where γ is about 1.4 for air and takes similar values

for other common gases. For liquids the ratio between the isothermal and adiabatic
compressibilities is much closer to unity. For liquids, however, both compressibilities
are normally much less than p−1, and the simplifying assumption that they are zero is
often justified.

The factor γ is not only the ratio between two compressibilities; it is also the ratio
between two principal specific heats. The molar specific heat is the amount of heat
required to raise the temperature of one mole through one degree. This is greater if the
substance is allowed to expand as it is heated, and therefore to do work, than if its
volume is fixed. The principal molar specific heats, CP and CV, refer to heating at

constant pressure and constant volume, respectively, and

For air, CP is about 3.5 R.

Solids can be stretched without breaking, and liquids, though not gases, can withstand
stretching, too. Thus, if the pressure is steadily reduced in a specimen of very pure
water, bubbles will ultimately appear, but they may not do so until the pressure is
negative and well below -107 newton per square metre; this is 100 times greater in
magnitude than the (positive) pressure exerted by the Earth’s atmosphere. Water owes
its high ideal strength to the fact that rupture involves breaking links of attraction
between molecules on either side of the plane on which rupture occurs; work must be
done to break these links. However, its strength is drastically reduced by anything that
provides a nucleus at which the process known as cavitation (formation of vapour- or
gas-filled cavities) can begin, and a liquid containing suspended dust particles
or dissolved gases is liable to cavitate quite easily.

Work also must be done if a free liquid drop of spherical shape is to be drawn out into a
long thin cylinder or deformed in any other way that increases its surface area. Here
again work is needed to break intermolecular links. The surface of a liquid behaves, in
fact, as if it were an elastic membrane under tension, except that the tension exerted by
an elastic membrane increases when the membrane is stretched in a way that the
tension exerted by a liquid surface does not. Surface tension is what causes liquids to
rise up capillary tubes, what supports hanging liquid drops, what limits the formation of
ripples on the surface of liquids, and so on.

Hydrostatics
It is common knowledge that the pressure of the atmosphere (about 105 newtons per
square metre) is due to the weight of air above the Earth’s surface, that this pressure
falls as one climbs upward, and, correspondingly, that pressure increases as one dives
deeper into a lake (or comparable body of water). Mathematically, the rate at which the
pressure in a stationary fluid varies with height z in a vertical gravitational field of

strength g is given by

If ρ and g are both independent of z, as is more or less the case in lakes, then

This means that, since ρ is about 103 kilograms per cubic metre for water and g is about
10 metres per second squared, the pressure is already twice the atmospheric value at a
depth of 10 metres. Applied to the atmosphere, equation (124) would imply that the
pressure falls to zero at a height of about 10 kilometres. In the atmosphere, however, the
variation of ρ with z is far from negligible and (124) is unreliable as a consequence; a
better approximation is given below in the section Hydrodynamics: Compressible flow
in gases.
Differential manometers

differential manometer, Torricellian barometer, and siphon

Instruments for comparing pressures are called differential manometers, and the
simplest such instrument is a U-tube containing liquid, as shown in Figure 1A. The two
pressures of interest, p1 and p2, are transmitted to the two ends of the liquid column
through an inert gas—the density of which is negligible by comparison with the liquid
density, ρ—and the difference of height, h, of the two menisci is measured. It is a
consequence of (124) that
Torricelli, Evangelista
A barometer for measuring the pressure of the atmosphere in absolute terms is simply a
manometer in which p2 is made zero, or as close to zero as is feasible. The barometer
invented in the 17th century by the Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista
Torricelli, and still in use today, is a U-tube that is sealed at one end (see Figure 1B). It
may be filled with liquid, with the sealed end downward, and then inverted. On
inversion, a negative pressure may momentarily develop at the top of the liquid column
if the column is long enough; however, cavitation normally occurs there and the column
falls away from the sealed end of the tube, as shown in the figure. Between the two exists
what Torricelli thought of as a vacuum, though it may be very far from that condition if
the barometer has been filled without scrupulous precautions to ensure that all
dissolved or adsorbed gases, which would otherwise collect in this space, have first been
removed. Even if no contaminating gas is present, the Torricellian vacuum always
contains the vapour of the liquid, and this exerts a pressure which may be small but is
never quite zero. The liquid conventionally used in a Torricelli barometer is of course
mercury, which has a low vapour pressure and a high density. The high density means
that h is only about 760 millimetres; if water were used, it would have to be about 10
metres instead.

Figure 1C illustrates the principle of the siphon. The top container is open to the
atmosphere, and the pressure in it, p2, is therefore atmospheric. To balance this and the
weight of the liquid column in between, the pressure p1 in the bottom container ought to
be greater by ρgh. If the bottom container is also open to the atmosphere,
then equilibrium is clearly impossible; the weight of the liquid column prevails and
causes the liquid to flow downward. The siphon operates only as long as the column is
continuous; it fails if a bubble of gas collects in the tube or if cavitation occurs.
Cavitation therefore limits the level differences over which siphons can be used, and it
also limits (to about 10 metres) the depth of wells from which water can be pumped
using suction alone.
Archimedes’ principle
Consider now a cube of side d totally immersed in liquid with its top and bottom faces
horizontal. The pressure on the bottom face will be higher than on the top by ρgd, and,
since pressure is force per unit area and the area of a cube face is d2, the resultant
upthrust on the cube is ρgd3. This is a simple example of the so-called Archimedes’
principle, which states that the upthrust experienced by a submerged or floating body is
always equal to the weight of the liquid that the body displaces. As Archimedes must
have realized, there is no need to prove this by detailed examination of the pressure
difference between top and bottom. It is obviously true, whatever the body’s shape. It is
obvious because, if the solid body could somehow be removed and if the cavity thereby
created could somehow be filled with more fluid instead, the whole system would still be
in equilibrium. The extra fluid would, however, then be experiencing the upthrust
previously experienced by the solid body, and it would not be in equilibrium unless this
were just sufficient to balance its weight.

Archimedes’ problem was to discover, by what would nowadays be called a

nondestructive test, whether the crown of King Hieron II was made of pure gold or of
gold diluted with silver. He understood that the pure metal and the alloy would differ in
density and that he could determine the density of the crown by weighing it to find its
mass and making a separate measurement of its volume. Perhaps the inspiration that
struck him (in his bath) was that one can find the volume of any object by submerging it
in liquid in something like a measuring cylinder (i.e., in a container with vertical sides
that have been suitably graduated) and measuring the displacement of the liquid
surface. If so, he no doubt realized soon afterward that a more elegant and more
accurate method for determining density can be based on the principle that bears his
name. This method involves weighing the object twice, first, when it is suspended in a
vacuum (suspension in air will normally suffice) and, second, when it is totally
submerged in a liquid of density ρ. If the density of the object is ρ′, the ratio between the

two weights must be

If ρ′ is less than ρ, then W2, according to equation (126), is negative. What that means is
that the object does not submerge of its own accord; it has to be pushed downward to
make it do so. If an object with a mean density less than that of water is placed in a lake
and not subjected to any downward force other than its own weight, it naturally floats
on the surface, and Archimedes’ principle shows that in equilibrium the volume of water
which it displaces is a fraction ρ′/ρ of its own volume. A hydrometer is an object
graduated in such a way that this fraction may be measured. By floating a hydrometer
first in water of density ρ0 and then in some other liquid of density ρ1 and comparing the
readings, one may determine the ratio ρ1/ρ0—i.e., the specific gravity of the other liquid.

possible orientations of a square prism in liquid

In what orientation an object floats is a matter of grave concern to those who design
boats and those who travel in them. A simple example will suffice to illustrate the factors
that determine orientation. Figure 2 shows three of the many possible orientations that
a uniform square prism might adopt when floating, with half its volume submerged in a
liquid for which ρ = 2ρ′; they are separated by rotations of 22.5°. In each of these
diagrams, C is the centre of mass of the prism, and B, a point known as the centre of
buoyancy, is the centre of mass of the displaced water. The distributed forces acting on
the prism are equivalent to its weight acting downward through C and to the equal
weight of the displaced water acting upward through B. In general, therefore, the prism
experiences a torque. In Figure 2B the torque is counterclockwise, and so it turns the
prism away from 2A and toward 2C. In 2C the torque vanishes because B is now
vertically below C, and this is the orientation that corresponds to stable equilibrium. The
torque also vanishes in 2A, and the prism can in principle remain indefinitely in that
orientation as well; the equilibrium in this case, however, is unstable, and the slightest
disturbance will cause the prism to topple one way or the other. In fact, the potential
energy of the system, which increases in a linear fashion with the difference in height
between C and B, is at its smallest in orientation 2C and at its largest in orientation 2A.
To improve the stability of a floating object one should, if possible, lower C relative to B.
In the case of a boat, this may be done by redistributing the load inside.