Las leyes de escala (escalamiento) nos permitirán determinar si un fenómeno físico

asociado a un sistema dado, será favorecido o disminuido cuando el tamaño del sistema
cambia.
Generalmente, las cosas más pequeñas son menos afectadas por fenómenos dependientes
del volumen tales como la masa y la inercia, en cambio son más afectados los fenómenos
dependientes del área tales como las fuerzas de contacto o transferencia de calor.
Matemáticamente, una ley de escala es una expresión que describe las variaciones de
cantidades físicas con el tamaño del sistema. Se usa análisis dimensional.
El escalamiento se refiere a la existencia de una relación tipo ley de potencia entre algunas
variables, x y y por ejemplo:

y = Axα
Las leyes de escalamiento revelan una propiedad importante sobre el fenómeno que
describen su autosimilaridad. Esto significa que el fenómeno se reproduce a sí mismo en
diferentes escalas de tiempo y/o espacio.

Para ser útil, una prueba modelo debe proporcionar datos que se puedan escalar para
obtener las fuerzas, los momentos y las cargas dinámicas que existirían en el prototipo a
gran escala. ¿Qué condiciones deben cumplirse para garantizar la similitud de flujos de
modelo y prototipo?
Similitud geométrica, similitud cinemática y similitud dinámica.
Para establecer las condiciones requeridas para una similitud dinámica completa, deben
considerarse todas las fuerzas que son importantes en un flujo determinado. Por lo tanto,
deben considerarse los efectos de las fuerzas viscosas, de las fuerzas de presión, de las
fuerzas de tensión superficial, etc. Las condiciones de prueba deben ser establecidas de
tal manera que todas las fuerzas importantes estén relacionadas por el mismo factor de
escala entre los flujos del modelo y del prototipo. Cuando existe una similitud dinámica,
los datos medidos en un flujo modelo pueden relacionarse cuantitativamente con las
condiciones en el flujo prototipo. ¿Cuáles son, entonces, las condiciones que aseguran la
similitud dinámica entre los flujos de modelo y prototipo?

El teorema de Buckingham Pi puede usarse para obtener los grupos adimensionales

gobernantes para un fenómeno de flujo; para lograr una similitud dinámica entre flujos
geométricamente similares, debemos asegurarnos de que cada grupo independiente
adimensional tenga el mismo valor en el modelo y en el prototipo. Entonces, no solo las
fuerzas tendrán la misma importancia relativa, sino que también el grupo adimensional
dependiente tendrá el mismo valor en el modelo y prototipo.

As the sizes shrink, different physical forces become more important or less important
depending on their nature
A medida que el tamaño de reduce, las diferentes fuerzas físicas se vuelven más
importantes o menos importantes dependiendo de su naturaleza.
Para expresar una ley de escala se usa formulas o ecuaciones exponenciales entre las dos
variables a relacionar:

y = bxa
x y y son las cantidades relativas.

Two Uses for Scaling Laws:

• Predict how something big will behave using a small model.
• Predict how system behavior changes as size (or some other variable) changes.

The scaling laws are proportionality relations of any parameter associated with an object
(or system) with its length scale. For example, the volume of an object varies as cubic
length (i.e., as l3); on the other hand, its surface area scales as l2. Therefore, a smaller
object possesses larger surface area to its volume when compared with a bigger object
with similar geometrical shape. There are primarily two types of scaling laws. One is
related to the scaling of physical size of objects. The other type is related to the scaling
of a phenomenological behavior of an object/machine.

ZOHURI (2015)
Dimensional Analysis is a method by which we deduce information about a phenomenon
from the single premise that a phenomenon can be described by a dimensionally
consistent equation of certain variables. The result of a dimensional analysis of a problem
is to reduce the number of variables in the problem, thereby gathering sufficient
information from only a few experiments. “The functions that express physical laws must
possess a certain fundamental property, which in mathematics is called generalized
homogeneity or symmetry. This property allows the number of arguments in these
functions to be reduced, thereby making it simpler to obtain them (by calculating them or
determining them experimentally). This is, in fact, the entire content of dimensional
analysis—there is nothing more to it”.
“Scaling is the assignment of objects to numbers according to a rule”.
Most physical magnitudes characterizing nano-scale systems differ enormously from
those familiar in macro-scale systems. Estimate some of these magnitudes can, however,
by applying scaling laws to the values for macro-scale systems.
A power-law relationship often can be seen in the mathematical modeling of various
phenomena, not only in mechanical engineering and physics, but also in other science
fields such as biology, economics, and other engineering discipline.
There are more subtle scaling laws that are used to solve very deep and complicated
problems at the frontiers of scientific research. The importance of scaling continues to the
present day. However, scaling laws are not merely some particularly simple cases of more
general relations. They are of special and exceptional importance. Scaling laws always
reveal an important property of the phenomenon
under consideration, which is its self-similarity. The word ‘self-similarity’ means that a
phenomenon reproduces itself on different time and/or space scales.
Scaling laws are a concept in science and engineering. It refers to variables which change
drastically depending on the scale (size) being considered. For example, if you tried to
build a 50-ton mining vehicle using the same engineering assumptions as a 2-ton car, you
would probably end up with a vehicle that does not even run. The term “scaling laws”
often appears when considering the design of a construct that is unusually large or small,
so that careful thought is necessary to extend principles of typical-sized constructs to
unusually sized constructs. Some scaling laws are simple. For instance, “for a three-
dimensional construct, volume increases with the cube of linear dimensions”. This simply
means that for every 10 times increase in linear dimensions, the construct’s volume
increases by a factor of 1000. This is significant for designing machines or structures: if
you wanted to double the capacity of awater tower, youwould only increase its linear
dimensions by a few dozen percent, rather than doubling them. Simple but true.
There are more complex variations of scaling laws where some of the most interesting
manifestations of scaling laws are being found in the areas of micro-technology and
nanotechnology, where engineers must both cope with and exploit unusual properties
resulting from small scales. In micro-fluidics, some of these unusual properties include
laminar flow, surface tension, electro-wetting, fast thermal relaxation, electrical surface
charges, and diffusion. For instance, in fluid chambers with sizes smaller than about half
a millimeter, the flow is laminar, meaning that two converging channels cannot mix
through turbulence, as on the macro-scale, and must instead mix through diffusion.
Scaling analysis is fundamental to predicting the behavior of structures and systems when
miniaturized. The subject of scaling analysis deals with a systematic method for
nondimensionalizing a system of describing equations for transport or reaction process.
Scale analysis is a powerful tool used in the mathematical sciences for the simplification
of equations with many terms.

Scaling analysis is a tool that identifies dimensionless parameters whose limiting values
either very large or very small permit making certain approximations in solving the
describing equations. It is a useful tool for developing perturbation expansion solutions
to the describing equations.