ME631A: Viscous Flow Theory

Dr. Anirban Guha

Mechanical Engineering Department
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
aguha@iitk.ac.in

First Semester 2017

Lecture 1
Definition of a fluid: A fluid is a continuum that cannot resist deviatoric stress, however small,
when at rest.
The above definition implies that even when a tiny amount of shear stress is applied, a fluid
at rest won’t be able to withstand it, and therefore will start to flow. Imagine the “lid-driven
cavity flow” problem. When the lid moves with a certain velocity (however small it may be), it
produces shear stress. By Newton’s law of viscosity, τboundary = µdU/dy. This means a flow
is produced within the fluid, the velocity field being U (y). While giving the above example, I
inadvertently introduced dU/dy, which is nothing but lim∆y→0 ∆U/∆y. Here comes the grave
question, can we actually go down to such an infinitesimal length like ∆y → 0? From basic
understanding of physics, this would imply that we are somewhere at the atomic level. Is a
velocity field like U meaningful when we are talking about atomic distances?

Continuum Hypothesis: Lets look at the ocean. Density of ocean, ρ( x, y, z) is not constant
but increases with depth (due to the combined effect of salinity and temperature). If we are
interested in measuring the density of ocean at the location ( x0 , y0 , z0 ), then we have to choose
a volume ∆V1 around that location and (somehow) calculate its mass, and then use the relation
∆m
ρ = ∆V to find the density. Referring to figure 1(a), if the red box (indicating the volume) is
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too large, then the estimate of density at ( x0 , y0 , z0 ) will not be accurate. If the box is as big as
the size of the ocean, then at every point we will obtain the average density ρ̄, which will mean
that the density of ocean is constant, which it is clearly not. The same kind of argument will
hold for any field quantity like velocity, temperature, pressure etc. This implies that for accurate
measurement, we need to choose a volume ∆V2 , that is small enough to resolve the spatial vari-
ations. But then we run into a problem. If we assume that there are N water molecules, each of
mass δmw , present in this small volume ∆V2 , then density ρ = δmw N/∆V2 . If ∆V2 → 0, we are
looking at atomic scales. Sometimes we will find N = 0, i.e. no molecules are passing through
∆V2 , hence we will obtain ρ = 0. If a molecule happens to pass, then the density reading will
be enormous (density of atomic nucleus is 1017 kg/m3 ). The density reading obtained in this
fashion will have an extremely large standard deviation. In fact, such a procedure for obtaining
density (or any other field quantity) is neither reproducible, nor yields meaningful results. This
means that we have to choose ∆V very wisely such that ∆V  ∆V2 (large enough to yield mean-
ingful and repeatable values) and ∆V  ∆V1 (small enough to resolve the spatial variations). In
figure 1(b), we denote such correct choice of volume by ∆Vc . The density of the point ( x0 , y0 , z0 ):

∆m
ρ( x0 , y0 , z0 ) = lim ,
∆V →0 ∆V
∆m
is assigned the value ρc , where ρc = ∆V c
. Here comes the fundamental assumption of continuum
hypothesis - matter is a continuum, i.e. there are no gaps or empty spaces. In this macroscopic
point of view, matter is indivisible. Hence, if we go down to infinitesimal scales, we wont find
anything like molecules or atoms or void spaces. This is shown by the red dashed line in figure
1(b); there is still a valid measure for density even when ∆V → 0. Of course, a real fluid (or
solid) will heave like the blue curve. But why ∆V → 0 and the fact about “matter being contin-
uous” so important? Because we want to use calculus, and for that we need limits to exist, and

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 (a) (b)

Figure 1: a) Plot of density versus depth in an ocean. The red box, which indicates ∆V, should
be small enough to resolve the spatial variations. (b) The blue curve shows the variation of
density with ∆V. When ∆V → 0, we loose a meaningful definition of density. There is a small
range for ∆V for which we have the “sweet spot”, i.e. neither too big nor too small. Here such
a representative volume is given by ∆Vc . The density corresponding to it is taken to be the
density of the point ( x0 , y0 , z0 ) under “continuum hypothesis”. The red dashed line says that by
continuum hypothesis, density at ∆Vc and ∆V → 0 are the same.

also want the functions (like velocity, density, etc.) to be smooth (continuous and differentiable).
In summary, to use continuum hypothesis certain criteria have to be followed:
1) Knudsen number Kn << 1, where Kn = λL , L is the characteristic length and λ is the mean
free path of the molecules under the specific conditions.
2) Velocity, pressure, density are continuous fields of space and time, which are differentiable
any number of times (except perhaps at finite points, i.e. isolated singularities in the domain).
3) There are no gaps in the domain, which means there are no intermolecular spaces.

Vectors and Vector space: We understand that when we are discussing about fluid we are
talking about fields, e.g. scalar fields like temperature or density or vector fields like velocity. A
field is basically a smooth function of space and time. Given the utmost importance of velocity in
fluid mechanics, and the fact that it is a “vector”, we will start from the fundamental definition
of vector (in the most general form), and then come to the “pointy arrow vector” that you are
more familiar with.
Definition: A vector space is a set V with an associated field F which satisfies certain closure
properties. A vector is an element of set V .

1) If two elements u ∈ V and v ∈ V , then v + u ∈ V .

2) There exists any scalar c ∈ F such that cu ∈ V .

There are 8 additional axioms:

1) u + v = v + u

2) (u + v) + w = u + (v + w)

3) 0 + v = v, where 0 is a null vector.

4) v + (−v) = 0

5) 1 · v = v

6) (c + d)v = cv + dv

7) ( ab)v = a(bv)

8) a(v + u) = a(v) + a(u).

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c Dr. A. Guha, IIT Kanpur
We can see that matrices, real numbers, polynomials also follow the above rules, hence they
are also vectors by definition. At this point, vectors are quite abstract, and provides the oppor-
tunity to introduce a key concept - the linear transformation.

Definition of Linear Transformation: Let V and W be vector spaces over the same field F .
Then T : V → W is said to be a linear transform if for any two vectors u ∈ V and v ∈ V and any
scalar c ∈ F , the following two conditions are satisfied:

1) T (u + v) = T (u) + T (v),

2) T (cu) = cT (u).
Later we will understand tensors, which are nothing but linear transformations.

Definition of basis vectors: Any vector is usually represented using basis vectors (e.g. unit
vectors in the Euclidean space). The have to obey these rules:
1) They are linearly independent.

2) They span the entire vector space.

Up to this point vectors have been defined with no reference to magnitude or direction. The
“vectors” we will work with indeed have both magnitude and direction. Vector spaces where
one can define a norm (which basically means length in an abstract sense) are called inner prod-
uct spaces.

Inner product space: An inner produce space is a vector space V with an associated field F
where we can define an inner product h·, ·i : V × V → F . This means that two vectors via inner
product operation gives a scalar.

Properties of inner product space :

1) Bilinearity: hu2 + u1 , vi = hu1 , vi + hu2 , vi.

2) Bilinearity: hαu2 , vi = αhu2 , vi, where α is scalar.
3) Symmetry: hu, vi = hv, ui. (Actually it is conjugate symmetry, but since we are dealing with
real vectors, the definition is fine)
4) Positive definiteness: hu, ui ≥ 0 and is 0 iff u = 0.
p
Norm of a vector: ||u|| = hu, ui.

Some additional properties involving norm:

|hu, vi|
1) Cauchy-Schwarz inequality: ≤1
||v||||u||
2) Triangle inequality: ||v + u|| ≤ ||v|| + ||u||

Examples: i) Dot product of two vectors (basis vectors are assumed orthonormal) is an inner
product in R2 : (u1 , u2 ) · (v1 , v2 ) = u1 v1 + u2 v2 .

ii) Let hx, yi = 2x1 y1 − x1 y2 − x2 y1 + 5x2 y2 . Then, hy, xi = 2y1 x1 − y1 x2 − y2 x1 +

5y2 x2 . We can see that both the equations are same, but not commutative term by term. The
above operation is symmetric because the result is same. This example shows symmetry, but
also shows that inner product in general may not be commutative. However, dot product (which
is a specific type of inner product) is commutative.

Henceforth we will only consider the vector space Rn (and in all our studies n would be ei-
ther 2 or 3). When basis vectors are orthonormal, the inner product (more commonly called
the “dot product”) is given by hu, vi = u† v = u1 v1 + u2 v2 ....un vn , where u = (u1 , u2 , .....un )† ,
v = (v1 , v2 , .....vn )† , and † denotes transpose.

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c Dr. A. Guha, IIT Kanpur
Figure 2: Two vectors. The length of the vectors and the angle between them do not care about
the coordinate system we have chosen for reporting them.

Dot product (in Rn ):

hu, vi = u · v ≡ ||u||||v|| cos(θ ), where θ is the angle between the vectors.

q
||u|| = u21 + u22 ..........u2n . We have assumed an orthonormal basis here, otherwise cross terms
like u1 v2 would be present.

Vectors and Coordinate system: Most people have the misconception that vectors are always as-
sociated with a coordinate system. In many books we see position vectors drawn in the x − y − z
coordinate system, giving the impression that coordinate system is imperative for defining a
vector. This is wrong. Till now we have defined vectors, have listed different vector properties
and introduced inner product operation. All these were done without resorting to any coordinate
system (e.g. rectangular, cylindrical, spherical or curvilinear). This simply tells us that we do not
need coordinate system for defining vectors or vector operations. The same is true for tensors.
In figure 2, we see two vectors - one of length (norm) of 5 cm and the other 3 cm. These lengths
will remain 5 cm and 3 cm, no matter what coordinate system you choose. The same is true
for the angle between them as well. It will be 20 degrees, no matter what reference frame you
choose. In summary, the magnitude and direction of a vector is not dependent on the coordinate
system. Then why on earth we refer to a coordinate system? To report a vector.
Let us consider an R3 vector space, and associate it with a coordinate system defined by
the basis vectors ê1 , ê2 and ê3 , which may not be orthogonal. Let u = u1 ê1 + u2 ê2 + u3 ê3 and
v = v1 ê1 + v2 ê2 + v3 ê3 be any two vectors in this vector space. As we see, we need the coordinate
system to tell others that in this particular coordinate system, the ê2 component of the v vector
is v2 . Then the dot product will be given by u · v = u† Av, where the matrix A has components
Aij = êi · ê j . When the basis vectors are orthonormal (this is also known as the standard basis),
we get Aij = δij , where δij is the Kronecker delta, and is 1 when i = j and 0 otherwise. That is A
becomes identity matrix I, and hence u · v = u† v.

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c Dr. A. Guha, IIT Kanpur