Baldonado, Francis S.

Five Prominent Persons Who Pioneer in Fluid Mechanics

Archimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC)
Archimedes’ principle physical law of buoyancy, discovered by the ancient Greek
mathematician and inventor Archimedes, stating that anybody completely or partially
submerged in a fluid (gas or liquid) at rest is acted upon by an upward, or buoyant, force the
magnitude of which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

French discovered that pressure applied to an enclosed fluid is transmitted undiminished to
every part of the fluid and to the walls of its container (Pascal's principle).
Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782)
 was a Dutch-born member of the Swiss mathematical family. His most important work
considered the basic properties of fluid flow, pressure, density and velocity, and gave
the Bernoulli principle.

Developed the fundamental relationship of fluid flow now known as Bernoulli's principle.

Osborne Reynolds (1842–1912)
Reynolds number, in fluid mechanics, a criterion of whether fluid (liquid or gas) flow is steady
(streamlined, or laminar) or on the average steady with small unsteady fluctuations (turbulent).
Whenever the Reynolds number is less than about 2,000, flow in a pipe is generally laminar,
whereas, at values greater than 2,000, flow is usually turbulent. Actually, the transition
between laminar and turbulent flow occurs not at a specific value of the Reynolds number but
in a range usually beginning between 1,000 to 2,000 and extending upward to between 3,000
and 5,000.
Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953)
 Father of Modern Aerodynamics and Founder of Modern Fluid Mechanics.
Boundary layer, in fluid mechanics, thin layer of a flowing gas or liquid in contact with a surface
such as that of an airplane wing or of the inside of a pipe. The fluid in the boundary layer is
subjected to shearing forces. A range of velocities exists across the boundary layer from
maximum to zero, provided the fluid is in contact with the surface. Boundary layers are thinner
at the leading edge of an aircraft wing and thicker toward the trailing edge. The flow in such
boundary layers are generally laminar at the leading or upstream portion and turbulent in the
trailing or downstream portion.