Unit-V Fluid dynamics

• Lift and the Bernoulli principle

• Reynolds number
• Drag coefficient and power requirements
• The magnus effect: why a curveball curves, lift in sailing,
rowing, and swimming
 Your views about “Air resistance”
In most of the cases we ignored air resistance

Air resistance has been seen as negative effect on the performance of a

player

Can travelling through air produce positive effects?

Aid to performer than hinderance???

 Bernoulli's principle
It relates rate of flow to the pressure of the fluid
 Another form of the principle
This principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs
simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in
the fluid's potential energy.

Applicability
The flow must be steady
=> the flow parameters (velocity, density, etc...) at any point cannot change with time
The flow must be incompressible
Negligible friction by viscous force
Along with conditions, can be applied on gases too
 Lift
• Deflection of air stream mainly decides the lift
• Bernoulli’s principle is not completely
applicable here
• Newton’s laws of motion are useful to
understand direction of the lift
 Cat fall_ rotational motion
Discussion

Discus throw through air, vacuum and wind

Discussion
Perfect kick
 Magnus effect
Gordon Dam Tasmania
 Reynolds Number
• The Reynolds number is a dimensionless factor that describes
the interaction between an object and the medium through
which the object is moving.

• It depends only on the shape of the object, it's speed, and

properties of the medium.

• For a sphere (baseball) the Reynolds number is given by:

R = rVd/h
where V is the speed of the sphere and d is its diameter; rho is
the density of the medium and eta is its viscosity.
 Density Vs viscosity
• Viscous fluids more dense ➔ true or not
• Think about oil and water; oil is less dense than water (it
floats on water) but it is more viscous.
 Information from Reynolds number
How much turbulence there is in the flow around the
object?

It allows you to scale things very accurately.

Model of a big object
Scale the wind velocity down so that the model has
the same Reynolds number as the real object
Then the turbulence produced in the airflow around
the model will be exactly the same as for the full-sized
object

This makes it much more economical to test designs

for airplanes and boats. Some typical flow patterns for
various Reynolds numbers are illustrated to the right
and below.
 Drag Coefficient
• The velocity dependence of the drag force is, itself, a function of
velocity. The drag force also depends on the shape of the object.
• At low speeds the drag force will be linear in velocity; at higher speeds
it will be quadratic (~V2). At very high (supersonic) speeds the drag
force can be proportional to V4.
• For the speeds and shapes (balls) relevant to sports the magnitude of
the drag force is given by:
FD = 1/2 CDArV2

V is the speed of the ball and r is the density of the medium; A is the
cross-sectional area, and CD is called the drag coefficient.
• For R less than about 1, CD is given by CD = 24/R,
and for 103 < R < 105 or so CD is relatively
constant with a value of about 1/2.
Dimpled golf ball
 Anti magnus effect
• It occurs only with smooth balls, and at low
flow speeds (i.e. low Reynolds number)
• If the speed of the surface of the spinning
ball is comparable to the speed of the
airflow then the flow on the two sides of the
ball can be in very different Reynolds
regimes.
• One side can have nice, smooth laminar
flow with a well-defined boundary layer,
while the other side has more turbulent The Anti-Magnus Effect is only for smooth balls
travelling at low speeds with small rotation rate
flow
 Suggestions
• DO NOT limit yourself to these slides only
• Explore physics behind sports more deeply
• Freely available content (Articles, videos, webpages etc.) on internet is
great source of knowledge, make proper use of it to strengthen your
basics
 References
• https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/index.html
• http://neutrino.phys.washington.edu/~wilkes/post/temp/phys208/note
s/lect17.html
• http://neutrino.phys.washington.edu/~wilkes/post/temp/phys208/note
s/lect18.html
• http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/wing/airfoil.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE