Amirkabir University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering Department

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Fluid Mechanics Course Spring 2014
Chapter 3 - Fundamentals of Flow Analysis
Review Notes
1. Streamlines, Pathlines
To obtain mathematical expressions for streamlines you can use the following formulae and then
integrate the expression to derive streamline equations:
dx / u = dy / v = dz / w
To obtain expressions for pathlines you can employ the following formulae:
x = y= z =
2. Acceleration
The acceleration of a fluidic element can be expressed as follows:
Acceleration of particles along various axes is evaluated via the following scalar equations:
Amirkabir University of Technology
Aerospace Engineering Department
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3. Angular Velocity and Vorticity
The angular velocity of a fluid element such as the one demonstrated in Fig.1 is calculated as
follows:
Fig.1
Also for other faces of the element:
The vorticity vector is defined as twice the angular velocity vector: = 2. The vorticity
components are:
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Aerospace Engineering Department
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4. The Material Derivative, Acceleration, and Vorticity in Rectangular, Cylindrical, and
Spherical Coordinates
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Aerospace Engineering Department
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5. Reynolds Transport Theorem
If we define N as an extensive property (depending on the mass of the body) for a hypothetical
body, and as N per unit volume then we have:
Which means the total rate of change for N at time t is the rate of flow of N passing through the
control surface (first expression on the right side) plus the rate of change of N inside control
volume.