We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
Introduction and key concepts
Fluid mechanics is fortunate to have fundamental equations and pioneering contributions that are primarily due to Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646–1716), Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), John Bernoulli (1667–1748), Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782), Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749–1827), Barré de Saint Venant (1797–1886), James A. Froude 1818–1894), Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824–1907), Sir George G. Stokes (1819–1903), Herman L. F. von Helmholtz (1821–1894), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Claude Navier (1785–1836), John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) (1842–1919), Arnold J. W. Sommerfeld (1868–1951), Ludwig Prandtl (1875–1953), G. I. Taylor (1886–1975), among many others.
Although our understanding of the fundamental concepts of fluid mechanics is sound, the applications are in a continual state of flux. In the years to come, either the laws of physics of turbulence will be discovered or delegated to heuristic reasoning, meticulous observations and measurements, physical and numerical simulations, and rigorous analyses.
Batchelor (1967) stated, “One of the most important problems of fluid mechanics is to determine the properties of the flow due to moving bodies of simple shape, over the entire range of values of Re, and more especially for the large values of Re corresponding to bodies of ordinary size moving through air and water.” The advances in fluid mechanics over the past 50 years have only enhanced the importance of the problem.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
