INTRODUCTION

Green’s Theorem is generalization of the fundamental theorem of calculus and a special case

of the (generalized) Stokes' Theorem. Stokes' Theorem is the most general fundamental

theorem of calculus in the context of integration in Rn. the surface and line integrals are defined

with the use of the partition of unity in a rather complicated and unnatural way. This approach

is then used with advantage in the proofs of the trace theorems and the Green’s theorem for the

integration. Green's theorem can be used only for vector fields in two dimensions. The

application of Green's theorem is generally tauted as simplifying various integrals. Much more

important is the use of Green's theorem to calculate the area of a region. Green's Theorem, or

"Green's Theorem in a plane," has two formulations: one formulation to find the circulation of

a two-dimensional function around a closed contour (a loop), and another formulation to find

the flux of a two-dimensional function around a closed contour. Applications of Green's

Theorem include finding the area enclosed by a two-dimensional curve, as well as many

engineering applications. since Green's theorem may facilitate the calculation of path (line)

integrals, the answer is that there are tons of direct applications to physics. Line or surface

integrals appear whenever you have a vector function (vector fields) in the integrand. Potential

energies are obtained wen you integrate a force over a path. If that path is closed, then you can

find the potential energy by integrating over the region bound by that path (do away with

parameterizations). Moreover, Green's theorem is a special case of Stokes theorem, which

appears everywhere in electromagnetism (think about how you get from the differential form

to integral form of the last two Maxwell equations). I'm sure a lot people here will come up

with tons of specific examples (which can also come from fluid mechanics, for example).

Apart from the application of greens theorem explained above, greens theorem is also

applies in the derivation of Reynolds transport theorem, Navier Strokes Equations of Fluid flow
and Flow through porous media. In the present study application of greens theorem in the

Reynolds transport theorem is shown.

Reynolds Transport Theorem

The Reynolds Transport Theorem provides a way to transfer equations for conservation of

mass, momentum, and energy from the Lagrangian point of view to the Eulerian point of view

using a control surface and a control volume. Fluid motion either by following fluid particles

(system, the Lagrangian point of view) or by observing fluid flow past a control volume (finite

volume, Eulerian point of view). Let B denote extensive property related to fluid flow such as

mass, linear momentum, angular momentum, or energy.

Reynolds Transport Theorem in context to fluid flow takes physical laws that are

normally applied to a discrete mass of a substance and applies them instead to a fluid flowing

continuously through a control volume. For this purpose, two types of fluid properties can be

distinguished: extensive properties, whose values depend on the amount of mass present, and

intensive properties, which are independent of mass. For any extensive property B, a

corresponding intensive property β can be defined as the quantity of B per unit mass of fluid,

that is β= dBldm. B and β can be scalar or vector quantities depending on the property being

considered.
 LITERATURE REVIEW

General

To understand the Green theorem, needs to understand Vector Calculus with vector fields. In

particular it requires looking at a new type of integral, the line integral and some of the

interpretations of the line integral. Then important theorems involving line integrals, Green’s

Theorem is discussed.

Vector field

In vector calculus, a vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point in a subset

of space. A vector field in the plane (for instance), can be visualised as: a collection of arrows

with a given magnitude and direction, each attached to a point in the plane. Vector fields are

often used to model, for example, the speed and direction of a moving fluid throughout space,

or the strength and direction of some force, such as the magnetic or gravitational force, as it

changes from one point to another point. The vectors in Figure 1 are air velocity vectors that

indicate the wind speed and direction at points 10 m above the surface elevation in the San

Francisco Bay area. We see at a glance from the largest arrows in part (a) that the greatest wind

speeds at that time occurred as the winds entered the bay across the Golden Gate Bridge. Part

(b) shows the very different wind pattern at a later date. Associated with every point in the air

we can imagine a wind velocity vector. This is an example of a velocity vector field.
 FIGURE 1 Velocity vector fields showing San Francisco Bay wind patterns

Other examples of velocity vector fields are illustrated in Figure 2: ocean currents and flow

past an airfoil.

FIGURE 2 Velocity vector fields

Definition Let D be a set in R2 (a plane region). A vector field on R2 is a function F that

assigns to each point (x,y) in D a two-dimensional vector F(x,y).

The best way to picture a vector field is to draw the arrow representing the vector starting at

F(x,y) the point (x,y) . Of course, it’s impossible to do this for all points , but we can gain a

reasonable impression of by doing it for a few representative points in as in Figure 3. Since is

a two-dimensional vector, we can write it in terms of its component functions and as

follows:

Notice that PandQ are scalar functions of two variables and are sometimes called scalar fields to distinguish
them from vector fields.

FIGURE 3 Vector field on R2

LINE INTEGRALS

In this section we define an integral that is similar to a single integral except that instead of

integrating over an interval [a,b] , we integrate over a curve . Such integrals are called line

integrals, although “curve integrals” would be better terminology. They were invented in the

early 19th century to solve problems involving fluid flow, forces, electricity, and magnetism.

We start with a plane curve given by the parametric equations

The line integral of along C is denoted by,

We use a ds here to acknowledge the fact that we are moving along the curve, C, instead of

the x-axis (denoted by dx) or the y-axis (denoted by dy). Because of the ds this is sometimes
called the line integral of f with respect to arc length.We’ve seen the notation ds before. If

you recall from Calculus II when we looked at the arc length of a curve given by parametric

equations we found it to be,

It is no coincidence that we use ds for both of these problems. The ds is the same for both the

arc length integral and the notation for the line integral. So, to compute a line integral we will

convert everything over to the parametric equations. The line integral is then,

Here are some of the more basic curves that we’ll need to know how to do as well as limits on the

parameter if they are required.

Next we need to know about line integrals over piecewise smooth curves. A piecewise

smooth curve is any curve that can be written as the union of a finite number of smooth

curves, ,…, where the end point of is the starting point of . Below is an

illustration of a piecewise smooth curve.

Evaluation of line integrals over piecewise smooth curves is a relatively simple thing to

do. All we do is evaluate the line integral over each of the pieces and then add them up. The

line integral for some function over the above piecewise curve would be,

We can do line integrals over three-dimensional curves as well.

Let’s suppose that the three-dimensional curve C is given by the parameterization,

hen the line integral is given by,

Note that often when dealing with three-dimensional space the parameterization will be given as a

vector function.

Notice that we changed up the notation for the parameterization a little. Since we rarely use the function

names we simply kept the x, y, and z and added on the part to denote that they may be functions of

the parameter.

Also notice that, as with two-dimensional curves, we have,

and the line integral can again be written as,

So, outside of the addition of a third parametric equation line integrals in three-dimensional space

work the same as those in two-dimensional space.

LINE INTEGRALS WITH RESPECT TO X AND/OR Y.

two-dimensional curve C with parameterization,

The line integral of f with respect to x is,

The line integral of f with respect to y is,

These have a dx or dy while the line integral with respect to arc length has a ds. So when

evaluating line integrals be careful to first note which differential you’ve got so you don’t

work the wrong kind of line integral.

These two integral often appear together and so we have the following shorthand notation for

these cases.

LINE INTEGRALS OF VECTOR FIELDS

In the previous two sections we looked at line integrals of functions. In this section we are

going to evaluate line integrals of vector fields. We’ll start with the vector field,
and the three-dimensional, smooth curve given by

The line integral of along C is

Note the notation in the left side. That really is a dot product of the vector field and the differential

really is a vector. Also, is a shorthand for,

We can also write line integrals of vector fields as a line integral with respect to arc length as

follows,

where is the unit tangent vector and is given by,

If we use our knowledge on how to compute line integrals with respect to arc length we can

see that this second form is equivalent to the first form given above.

Fundamental Theorem for Line Integrals

uppose that C is a smooth curve given by , . Also suppose that f is a function

whose gradient vector, , is continuous on C. Then,

Note that represents the initial point on C while represents the final point

on C. Also, we did not specify the number of variables for the function since it is really

immaterial to the theorem. The theorem will hold regardless of the number of variables in

the function.

This is a fairly straight forward proof.

For the purposes of the proof we’ll assume that we’re working in three dimensions, but it can

be done in any dimension.

Let’s start by just computing the line integral.

Now, at this point we can use the Chain Rule to simplify the integrand as follows,

To finish this off we just need to use the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus for single

integrals.
Definitions

First suppose that is a continuous vector field in some domain D.

1. is a conservative vector field if there is a function f such that . The

function f is called a potential function for the vector field. We first saw this

definition in the first section of this chapter.

2. is independent of path if for any two paths and

in D with the same initial and final points.

3. A path C is called closed if its initial and final points are the same point. For example

a circle is a closed path.

4. A path C is simple if it doesn’t cross itself. A circle is a simple curve while a figure 8

type curve is not simple.

5. A region D is open if it doesn’t contain any of its boundary points.

6. A region D is connected if we can connect any two points in the region with a path

that lies completely in D.

7. A region D is simply-connected if it is connected and it contains no holes. We won’t

need this one until the next section, but it fits in with all the other definitions given

here so this was a natural place to put the definition.

With these definitions we can now give some nice facts.

1. is independent of path.
 This is easy enough to prove since all we need to do is look at the theorem

above. The theorem tells us that in order to evaluate this integral all we need are the

initial and final points of the curve. This in turn tells us that the line integral must be

independent of path.

2. If is a conservative vector field then is independent of path.

This fact is also easy enough to prove. If is conservative then it has a potential

function, f, and so the line integral becomes . Then using the first

fact we know that this line integral must be independent of path.

3. If is a continuous vector field on an open connected region D and

if is independent of path (for any path in D) then is a conservative vector

field on D.

4. If is independent of path then for every closed path C.

5. If for every closed path C then is independent of path.

GREEN’S THEOREM

Greens Theorem gives the relationship between certain kinds of line integrals (on closed

paths) and double integrals.

Let’s start off with a closed curve C and let D be the region enclosed by the curve. Here is a

sketch of such a curve and region.

GREENS THEOREM

Let C be a positively oriented, piecewise smooth, simple, closed curve and let D be the region

enclosed by the curve. If P and Q have continuous first order partial derivatives on D then

we considered (amongst other things) the evaluation of line integrals for which the path C is

closed and lies entirely in the xy-plane. Since the path is closed it will enclose a region R of

the plane. We now discuss how to express the line integral around the loop as a double

integral over the enclosed region R.

Suppose the functions P(x, y), Q(x, y) and their partial derivatives are singlevalued, finite and

continuous inside and on the boundary C of some simply connected region R in the xy-plane.

Green’s theorem in a plane (sometimes called the divergence theorem in two dimensions)

then states
and so relates the line integral around C to a double integral over the enclosed region R. This

theorem may be proved straightforwardly in the following way. Consider the simply

connected region R in figure

Figure. 2 A simply connected region R bounded by the curve C.

let y = y1(x) and

y = y2(x) be the equations of the curves STU and SVU respectively. We then write

If we now let x = x1(y) and x = x2(y) be the equations of the curves TSV and

TUV respectively, we can similarly show that

Subtracting these two results gives Green’s theorem in a plane.

Now, since this region has a hole in it we will apparently not be able to use Green’s Theorem

on any line integral with the curve . However, if we cut the disk in half and

rename all the various portions of the curves we get the following sketch.

The boundary of the upper portion (D1)of the disk is and the boundary on

the lower portion (D2)of the disk is . Also notice that we can use

Green’s Theorem on each of these new regions since they don’t have any holes in them. This

means that we can do the following,

Now, we can break up the line integrals into line integrals on each piece of the boundary. Also

recall from the work above that boundaries that have the same curve, but opposite direction

will cancel. Doing this gives,

But at this point we can add the line integrals back up as follows,

The end result of all of this is that we could have just used Green’s Theorem on the disk from

the start even though there is a hole in it. This will be true in general for regions that have

holes in them.

Research Development in Application to Greens Theorem

Dennis et, al (1998): Reviewed the methods where Green's theorem may be employed in

solving numerically the Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible fluid motion. They are

based on the concept of using the theorem to transform local boundary conditions given on the

boundary of a closed region in the solution domain into global, or integral, conditions taken

over it. Two formulations of the Navier–Stokes equations are considered: that in terms of the

streamfunction and vorticity for two-dimensional motion and that in terms of the primitive

variables of the velocity components and the pressure. In the first formulation overspecification

of conditions for the streamfunction is utilized to obtain conditions of integral type for the

vorticity and in the second formulation integral conditions for the pressure are found. Some

illustrations of the principle of the method are given in one space dimension, including some
derived from two-dimensional flows using the series truncation method. In particular, an

illustration is given of the calculation of surface vorticity for two-dimensional flow normal to

a flat plate. An account is also given of the implementation of these methods for general two-

dimensional flows in both of the mentioned formulations and a numerical illustration is given.

Whitaker et, al (1966): continuity equation and the equations of motion are developed for

flow in anisotropic porous media, and the conditions under which Darcy’s law holds are

clearly established. Reynolds transport theorem and Green’s theorem are applied to change

the volume integrals.

 APPLICATION OF GREENS THEOREM IN THE REYNOLDS TRANSPORT

THEOREM.

Consider a diverging (expanding) of a flow field bounded by a stream tube. The selected

control volume is considered to be fixed between sections ‘a’ and section ’b’. Note that both

the sections are normal to the direction of flow. At some initial time t, system I exactly

coincides. The control volume and therefore system and control volume are identical at that

time. At time t   t system I has moved in the flow direction at uniform speed v1 and a part

of system II has centered into the control volume.

Let ‘N’ represents any properties of the fluid (mass, momentum, energy) and ‘n’ represent the

amount of ‘N’ per unit mass (called as intensive properties) in a small proportion of the fluid.

The total amount of ‘N’ in a control volume is expresses as

 the time rate of   the rate change   the flux of N   the flux of N 
change of N of  of N within the   passing into the  passing out the
    
 the system   cv   control fans  control surface 

Consider the time derivative of a material volume integral, i.e. a volume integral where the

volume is moving with the fluid. We obtain the following expressions

The volume in the _rst integral on the last line is represented in figure 1.6, where a volume

element describing the change in volume between V at time t and t +Δ t can be written as

This implies that the volume integral can be converted to a surface integral. This surface

integral can in turn be changed back to a volume integral by the use of Gauss (or Greens)

theorem. We have

which is the Reynolds transport theorem.

Which is the Reynolds transport theorem

 CONCLUSIONS

Dennis, S. C. R., & Quartapelle, L. (1989). Some uses of Green's theorem in solving the Navier–Stokes

equations. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, 9(8), 871-890.

Whitaker, S. (1966). The equations of motion in porous media. Chemical Engineering

Science, 21(3), 291-300.

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/applications-of-greens-theorem-to-

physics.604935/
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/LineIntegralsPtI.aspx