Fluid Mechanics

Abstract

ask themselves why another textbook on the basics of fluid mechanics has been written, in view of the fact that the market in this field seems to be more than saturated. The author is quite conscious of this situation, but he thinks all the same that this book is justified because it covers areas of fluid mechanics which have not yet been discussed in existing texts, or only to some extent, in the way treated here. When looking at the textbooks available on the market that give an introduction into fluid mechanics, one realizes that there is hardly a text among them that makes use of the entire mathematical knowledge of students and that specifically shows the relationship between the knowledge obtained in lectures on the basics of engineering mechanics or physics and modern fluid mechanics. There has been no effort either to activate this knowledge for educational purposes in fluid mechanics. This book therefore attempts to show specifically the existing relationships between the above fields, and moreover to explain them in a way that is understandable to everybody and making it clear that the motions of fluid elements can be described by the same laws as the movements of solid bodies in engineering mechanics or physics. The tensor representation is used for describing the basic equations, showing the advantages that this offers. The present book on fluid mechanics makes an attempt to give an introductory structured representation of this special subject, which goes far beyond the potential-theory considerations and the employment of the Bernoulli equation, that often overburden the representations in fluid mechanics textbooks. The time when potential theory and energy considerations, based on the Bernoulli equation, had to be the center of the fluid mechanical education of students is gone. The development of modern measuring and computation techniques, that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century, up to the application level, makes detailed fluid-flow investigations possible nowadays, and for this aim students have to be educated.