Chapter 1
Basic Concepts of Fluid Flow
1.1 Introduction
Fluids are substances whose molecular structure offers no resistance to external
shear forces: even the smallest force causes deformation of a fluid particle. Although
a significant distinction exists between liquids and gases, both types of fluids obey
the same laws of motion. In most cases of interest, a fluid can be regarded as a
continuum, i.e., a continuous substance.
Fluid flow is caused by the action of externally applied forces. Common driving
forces include pressure differences, gravity, shear, rotation, and surface tension. They
can be classified as surface forces (e.g., the shear force due to wind blowing above
the ocean or pressure and shear forces created by a movement of a rigid wall relative
to the fluid) and body forces (e.g., gravity and forces induced by rotation).
While all fluids behave similarly under action of forces, their macroscopic prop-
erties differ considerably. These properties must be known if one is to study fluid
motion; the most important properties of simple fluids are the density and viscosity.
Others, such as Prandtl number, specific heat, and surface tension affect fluid flows
only under certain conditions, e.g., when there are large temperature differences.
Fluid properties are functions of other physical variables (e.g., temperature and pres-
sure); although it is possible to estimate some of them from statistical mechanics or
kinetic theory, they are usually obtained by laboratory measurement.
Fluid mechanics is a very broad field. A small library of books would be required
to cover all of the topics that could be included in it. In this book we shall be interested
mainly in flows of interest to engineers but even that is a very broad area (ranging,
for example, from wind turbines to gas turbines, from nano-scale to Airbus-scale,
and from HVAC to human blood flow). However, we can try to classify the types of
problems that may be encountered. A more mathematical, but less complete, version
of this scheme will be found in Sect. 1.8.
The speed of a flow affects its properties in a number of ways. At low enough
speeds, the inertia of the fluid may be ignored and we have creeping flow. This
regime is of importance in flows containing small particles (suspensions), in flows
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2 1 Basic Concepts of Fluid Flow
through porous media or in narrow passages (coating techniques, micro-devices).
As the speed is increased, inertia becomes important but each fluid particle follows
a smooth trajectory; the flow is then said to be laminar. Further increases in speed
may lead to instability that eventually produces a more random type of flow that
is called turbulent; the process of laminar-turbulent transition is an important area
in its own right. Finally, the ratio of the flow speed to the speed of sound in the
fluid (the Mach number) determines whether exchange between kinetic energy of
the motion and internal degrees of freedom needs to be considered. For small Mach
numbers, Ma < 0.3, the flow may be considered incompressible; otherwise, it is
compressible. If Ma < 1, the flow is called subsonic; when Ma > 1, the flow is
supersonic and shock waves are possible. Finally, for Ma > 5, the compression may
create high enough temperatures to change the chemical nature of the fluid; such
flows are called hypersonic. These distinctions affect the mathematical nature of the
problem and therefore the solution method. Note that we call the flow compressible
or incompressible depending on the Mach number, even though compressibility is a
property of the fluid. This is common terminology because the flow of a compressible
fluid at low Mach number is essentially incompressible.
It is common now for engineers to deal with geophysical flows, e.g., in the ocean
and atmosphere. There, the fluid density responds to pressure so that the fluid is
effectively compressible in many cases, even in the absence of motion. However,
except in issues dealing with the deep ocean, the speed of sound in sea water is very
large and sea water can be taken as incompressible even though its density depends
on the ocean temperature and salt concentration. The atmosphere is quite different.
There the pressure and air density decrease exponentially with altitude so the fluid
may need to be treated as compressible, except perhaps in the atmospheric boundary
layer near the earth’s surface.
In many flows, the effects of viscosity are important only near walls, so that the
flow in the largest part of the domain can be considered as inviscid. In the fluids we
treat in this book, Newton’s law of viscosity is a good approximation and it will be
used exclusively. Fluids obeying Newton’s law are called Newtonian; non-Newtonian
fluids are important for some engineering applications but are not treated here.
Many other phenomena affect fluid flow. These include temperature differences
which lead to heat transfer and density differences which give rise to buoyancy.
They, and differences in concentration of solutes, may affect flows significantly or,
even be the sole cause of the flow. Phase changes (boiling, condensation, melting
and solidification), when they occur, always lead to important modifications of the
flow and give rise to multiphase flow. Variation of other properties such as viscosity,
surface tension etc. may also play an important role in determining the nature of the
flow. With only a few exceptions, these effects will not be considered in this book.
In this chapter the basic equations governing fluid flow and associated phenomena
will be presented in several forms: (i) a coordinate-free form, which can be specialized
to various coordinate systems, (ii) an integral form for a finite control volume, which
serves as starting point for an important class of numerical methods, and (iii) a
differential (tensor) form in a Cartesian reference frame, which is the basis for another
important approach. The basic conservation principles and laws used to derive these
1.1 Introduction 3
equations will only be briefly summarized here; more detailed derivations can be
found in a number of standard texts on fluid mechanics (e.g., Bird et al. 2006; White
2010). It is assumed that the reader is somewhat familiar with the physics of fluid
flow and related phenomena, so we shall concentrate on techniques for the numerical
solution of the governing equations.
1.2 Conservation Principles
Conservation laws can be derived by considering a given quantity of matter or control
mass (CM) and its extensive properties, such as mass, momentum and energy. This
approach is used to study the dynamics of solid bodies, where the CM (sometimes
called the system) is easily identified. In fluid flows, however, it is difficult to follow
a parcel of matter. It is more convenient to deal with the flow within a certain spatial
region we call a control volume (CV), rather than in a parcel of matter which quickly
passes through the region of interest. This method of analysis is called the control
volume approach.
We shall be concerned primarily with two extensive properties, mass and momen-
tum. The conservation equations for these and other properties have common terms
which will be considered first.
The conservation law for an extensive property relates the rate of change of the
amount of that property in a given control mass to externally determined effects. For
mass, which is neither created nor destroyed in the flows of engineering interest, the
conservation equation can be written:
dm
=0. (1.1)
dt
On the other hand, momentum can be changed by the action of forces and its con-
servation equation is Newton’s second law of motion:
d(mv)
= f, (1.2)
dt
where t stands for time, m for mass, v for the velocity, and f for forces acting on the
control mass.1
We shall transform these laws into a control volume form that will be used through-
out this book. The fundamental variables will be intensive rather than extensive
properties; the former are properties which are independent of the amount of matter
considered. Examples are density ρ (mass per unit volume) and velocity v (momen-
tum per unit mass).
If φ is any conserved intensive property (for mass conservation, φ = 1; for
momentum conservation, φ = v; for conservation of a scalar, φ represents the con-
1 Bold symbols, e.g., v or f are vectors with three components in the context of this book.
4 1 Basic Concepts of Fluid Flow
served property per unit mass), then the corresponding extensive property can be
expressed as:
= ρφ dV , (1.3)
VCM
where VCM stands for volume occupied by the CM. Using this definition, the left
hand side of each conservation equation for a control volume can be written2 :
d d
ρφ dV = ρφ dV + ρφ (v − vs ) · n dS , (1.4)
dt dt
VCM VCV SCV
where VCV is the CV volume, SCV is the surface enclosing CV, n is the unit vector
orthogonal to SCV and directed outwards, v is the fluid velocity and vs is the velocity
with which the CV surface is moving. For a fixed CV, which we shall be considering
most of the time, vs = 0 and the first derivative on the right hand side becomes a
local (partial) derivative. This equation states that the rate of change of the amount
of the property in the control mass, , is the rate of change of the property within the
control volume plus the net flux of it through the CV boundary due to fluid motion
relative to CV boundary. The last term is usually called the convection (or sometimes,
advection) flux of φ through the CV boundary. If the CV moves so that its boundary
coincides with the boundary of a control mass, then v = vs and this term will be zero
as required.
A detailed derivation of this equation is given in many textbooks on fluid dynamics
(e.g., in Bird et al. 2006; Street et al. 1996; Pritchard 2010) and will not be repeated
here. The mass, momentum and scalar conservation equations will be presented in
the next three sections. For convenience, a fixed CV will be considered; V represents
the CV volume and S its surface.
1.3 Mass Conservation
The integral form of the mass conservation (continuity) equation follows directly
from the control volume equation, by setting φ = 1:
∂
ρ dV + ρv · n dS = 0 . (1.5)
∂t V S
By applying the Gauss’ divergence theorem to the convection term, we can transform
the surface integral into a volume integral. Allowing the control volume to become
infinitesimally small leads to a differential coordinate-free form of the continuity
equation:
2 This equation is often called the control volume equation or the Reynolds’ transport theorem.
1.3 Mass Conservation 5
∂ρ
+ ∇ · (ρv) = 0 . (1.6)
∂t
This form can be transformed into a form specific to a given coordinate system by
providing the expression for the divergence operator in that system. Expressions for
common coordinate systems such as the Cartesian, cylindrical and spherical systems
can be found in many textbooks (e.g., Bird et al. 2006); expressions applicable to
general non-orthogonal coordinate systems are given, e.g., in Aris (1990) or Chen
et al. (2004a). We present below the Cartesian form in both tensor and expanded
notation. Here and throughout this book we shall adopt the Einstein convention that
whenever the same index appears twice in any term, summation over the range of
that index is implied:
∂ρ ∂(ρu i ) ∂ρ ∂(ρu x ) ∂(ρu y ) ∂(ρu z )
+ = + + + =0, (1.7)
∂t ∂xi ∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z
where xi (i = 1, 2, 3) or (x, y, z) are the Cartesian coordinates and u i or (u x , u y , u z )
are the Cartesian components of the velocity vector v. The conservation equations
in Cartesian form are often used and this will be the case in this work. Differential
conservation equations in non-orthogonal coordinates will be presented in Chap. 9.
1.4 Momentum Conservation
There are several ways of deriving the momentum conservation equation. One
approach is to use the control volume method described in Sect. 1.2; in this method,
one uses Eqs. (1.2) and (1.4) and replaces φ by v, e.g., for a fixed fluid-containing
volume of space:
∂
ρv dV + ρvv · n dS = f. (1.8)
∂t V S
To express the right hand side in terms of intensive properties, one has to consider
the forces which may act on the fluid in a CV:
• surface forces (pressure, normal and shear stresses, surface tension etc.);
• body forces (gravity, centrifugal and Coriolis forces, electromagnetic forces, etc.).
The surface forces due to pressure and stresses are, from the molecular point of view,
the microscopic momentum fluxes across a surface. If these fluxes cannot be written
in terms of the properties whose conservation the equations govern (density and
velocity), the system of equations is not closed; that is, there are fewer equations than
dependent variables and solution is not possible. This possibility can be avoided by
making certain assumptions. The simplest assumption is that the fluid is Newtonian;
fortunately, the Newtonian model applies to many actual fluids.
For Newtonian fluids, the stress tensor T, which is the molecular rate of transport
of momentum, can be written:
6 1 Basic Concepts of Fluid Flow
2
T = − p + μ ∇ · v I + 2μD , (1.9)
3
where μ is the dynamic viscosity, I is the unit tensor, p is the static pressure and D
is the rate of strain (deformation) tensor:
1
D= ∇v + (∇v)T . (1.10)
2
These two equations may be written, in index notation in Cartesian coordinates, as
follows:
2 ∂u j
Ti j = − p + μ δi j + 2μDi j , (1.11)
3 ∂x j
1 ∂u i ∂u j
Di j = + , (1.12)
2 ∂x j ∂xi
where δi j is Kronecker symbol (δi j = 1 if i = j and δi j = 0 otherwise). For incom-
pressible flows, the second term in the brackets in Eq. (1.11) is zero by virtue of the
continuity equation. The following notation is often used in literature to describe the
viscous part of the stress tensor:
2
τi j = 2μDi j − μδi j ∇ · v . (1.13)
3
For non-Newtonian fluids, the relation between the stress tensor and the velocity is
often defined by a set of partial differential equations and the total problem is far
more complicated; see, e.g., Bird and Wiest (1995). For the class of non-Newtonian
fluids which are described using the same kind of constitutive relation as above,
but only require a variable viscosity (typically a non-linear function of velocity
gradients and temperature) or a stress model comparable to the Reynolds stress
models described in Chap. 10, the same methods used for Newtonian fluids can be
used.3 However, different types of non-Newtonian fluids require different constitutive
equations as seen in Bird and Wiest (1995); these may, in turn, require specialized
solution methods. This subject is complex and is just briefly touched on in Chap. 13.
With the body forces (per unit mass) being represented by b, the integral form of
the momentum conservation equation becomes:
∂
ρv dV + ρvv · n dS = T · n dS + ρb dV . (1.14)
∂t V S S V
A coordinate-free vector form of the momentum conservation equation (1.14) is read-
ily obtained by applying Gauss’ divergence theorem to the convection and diffusion
3 Forexample, blood can be treated as Newtonian at high shear rates (Tokuda et al. 2008), but with
a variable viscosity in other cases (Perktold and Rappitsch 1995).
