Dr.

Noor Azizah binti Sidek

Jabatan Kejuruteraan Mekanikal
PPD, UTHM
H/p no : 0137711379
noorazizah@uthm.edu.my

DAM 23903
FLUID MECHANICS
INTRODUCTION TO FLUID
MECHANICS
Topic 1
 What is Fluid Mechanics?
 The branch of science that studies the behavior of fluids
either they are in motion or at rest.
 Divided into 3 sub-disciplines : Fluid Statics, Fluid
Dynamics and Fluid Kinematics.

 Fluid Statics : Study of fluids at rest (e.g : Calculating

the hydrostatics forces on water gate and dam.)
 E.g of fluid at rest : fluids in tank, reservoir, lake, sea
etc.

 Fluid Dynamics : deals with fluid flow—the study of

fluids in motion.
 E.g : Calculating lift and drag forces on aircraft,
determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through
pipelines, blood flow analysis and predicting weather
patterns.
Determination of hydrostatic force on the
dam – lead to the thickness determination of
the dam.

Determination of buoyant force of the

pontoon – the size of pontoon then can be
calculated.
 Fluid Kinematics : Fluid kinematics is the study of how
fluids flow and how to describe fluid motion without
considering the effect of external pressures or forces
that cause the motion.
 E.g : Study of flow fields includes streamlines,
streaklines, pathline, timelines, concepts of vorticity and
wake.

Study of flow fields/flow pattern through visualization

technique.
 The Application of Fluid Mechanics
Fluid Mechanics is extremely important in many areas of
engineering and science. It principles and applications can be
found in many engineering system:

 Mechanical Engineering - design and analysis of pumps,

turbines, aircraft, boats, submarines, rockets, jet engines, wind
turbines, steam power plant, refrigeration system, hyraulic
system, engine and radiator system, lubrication, the
transportation of fluid like water, crude oil and natural gas etc.

 Civil Engineering - design of buildings, bridges and dams,

transportion of river sediments, pollution study of air and
water, design of piping systems, flood control systems etc.
The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge roadway twisted and
vibrated violently on the day of the collapse in Nov 1940
 The Application of Fluid Mechanics
 Biomechanics/ Biomedical – study on blood flow through
arteries, organ rupture under hypertension, condition flow of
cerebral fluid, designing the artificial hearts, breathing machines,
and dialysis systems.

 Meteorology and Ocean Engineering - movements of air

currents and water currents, the whether patterns.

 Chemical Engineering - design of chemical processing

equipment.

 Electrical Engineering – in the cooling of electronic

components, power generation (hydroelectric power plant,
steam power plant, gas turbines, wind turbine etc).
FLUID PROPERTIES

Topic 1
 What is Fluids?
 Fluid is a substance that can be flow or deforms
continuously under applied shear.
 A solid is “hard” and not easily deformed, whereas a fluid
is “soft” and is easily deformed.
 So, among three types of matter : solids, liquids and
gaseous, only liquids and gaseous are consider as fluids.
 Fluids : water, oil, lubricant, milk.
 Not fluids (solid) : steel, diamonds, rubber bands, and
paper.
 Cont…
 The
different
between
liquids and
gaseous.

 Because of
their
molecular
spacing,
liquids
normally
have higher
densities
than gases.
Compressible Vs Incompressible fluids
 A flow is classified as being compressible or
incompressible, depending on the level of variation of
density during flow.
 A fluid is said to be incompressible if the density of fluid
remains nearly constant throughout.
 The densities of liquids are essentially constant, and thus
the flow of liquids is typically incompressible.
 Therefore, liquids are usually referred to as
incompressible substances while gaseous, on the other
hand, are highly compressible.
Newtonian Fluid and Non-Newtonian Fluid
Newtonian fluids
 Any fluids that behave in accordance with Newton's law of
viscosity are called as Newtonian fluid.
 Most common fluids such as water, oil, gasoline, benzene,
kerosene, alcohol and glycerin are classified as Newtonian
fluids.
Newtonian Fluid and Non-Newtonian Fluid
Non-Newtonian fluids
 Fluids for which the shearing stress is not linearly related to
the rate of shearing strain or in other word fluids which do not
obey the Newton's law of viscosity are designated as non-
Newtonian fluids.
 Generally non-Newtonian fluids are complex mixtures like
slurries, pastes, gels, polymer solutions etc.
 Although there are a variety of types of non-Newtonian fluids,
the simplest and most common are the fluids with time-
independent behaviors as shown in following figure.
Cont…Non-Newtonian Fluid
Bingham-plastic: Resist a small shear stress
but flow easily under larger shear stresses.
 E.g : tooth-paste, jellies, chocolate, mustard,
mayonnaise, and some slurries.
Pseudo-plastic: The viscosity decreases with
increasing velocity gradient, the harder the
fluid is sheared, the less viscous it becomes.
 Other e.g: Paint, polymer solutions, blood
plasma, latexes, syrups, adhesives and inks.
Dilatant fluids: The viscosity increases with
increasing velocity gradient but the curve
begins with a low slope, indicating a low
apparent viscosity.
 E.g : water-corn starch mixture and water-
sand mixture (“quicksand”).
 Fluid Properties
Q : What is the importance of knowing the fluid properties?

Different fluids can have grossly different characteristics.

For example, gases are light and compressible, whereas liquids
are heavy (by comparison) and relatively incompressible.
A syrup flows slowly from a container, but water flows rapidly
when poured from the same container.
To quantify these differences, certain fluid properties are used.

In this chapter, we will look into a several properties that play an

important role in the fluid mechanics analysis.
Density
 The density of a substance is the quantity of matter contained
in a unit volume of the substance.
 It can be expressed in three different ways;
i. mass density
ii. specific weight
iii. specific gravity
Mass density
 Also refer as only “density”
 It describe the “heaviness” of a fluid.
 Designated by the greek symbol ρ (rho). ρ = m (mass)
V (volume)
 The density is defined as the mass per unit volume:
 The SI units for the density is kg/m3
 Values of density for some common liquids at Patm = 1.013 bar
and T=4 °C.
ρH2O = 1000 kg/m3 ρair = 1.23 kg/m3 ρHg = 13546 kg/m3
Mass density……cont
There are 3 samples of water which obtained from different
sources
 sample from Nile River
 sample from Amazon River
 sample from Mekong River

 Question : Do all the samples have the same density (i.e =

1000 kg/m3)?
Specific weight
 Designated by the greek symbol γ (gamma).
 Specific weight is defined as the weight of a substance per unit
volume and can be expressed as
γ = ρg
where ρ is density
and g is the gravitational acceleration (= 9.81 m/s2).
 The SI units for the specific weight is N/m3
 Some common values of γ at 4 °C ;
γ H2O = 1000 x 9.81 = 9810 N/m3
γ air = 1.23 x 9.81 = 12.07 N/m3
Specific gravity
 Also known as relative density.
 Designated by the symbol of SG.
 Specific gravity is defined as the ratio of the density of a
substance or fluid to the density of water. ρ fluid
SG fluid =
ρ
H 2O

 Have no units/ dimensionless.

 E.g : SGH2O = ρH2O / ρH2O = 1000/1000 =1
SGHg = ρHg / ρwater = 13546/1000 = 13.546
If SGfluid >1 , that means the fluid/substance is denser than water
and vice versa (SGfluid <1 = the fluid is less denser than water).
Viscosity
 Viscosity is a measure of frictional resistance of fluid to flow.
 It describes the “fluidity” of the fluid.
 There are two types of viscosity : dynamics and kinematics
viscosity.
 The term “viscosity” always refers to the dynamic viscosity.
Dynamic viscosity
 Designated by the greek symbol μ (mu).
 Newton's law of viscosity is given by
τ Force/Area
µ= =
du / dy velocity/distance

where µ = viscosity of fluid

τ = shear stress
du/dy = shear rate, rate of strain or velocity gradient

 The SI units for dynamic viscosity is N.s/m2 or kg/ms.

 Other unit is poise where 1 poise = 0.1 N.s/m2.
Kinematic viscosity
 Designated by the greek symbol ν (nu).
 The kinematics viscosity is defined as the ratio of dynamic
viscosity to the density of a substance.
µ
υ=
ρ
 The SI unit for kinematics viscosity is m2/s.
 Other unit is Stokes, St atau centistokes, cst where 104 St = 1
m2/s.
Exercises
1. A reservoir of oil has a mass of 825 kg. The reservoir has a
volume of 0.917 m3. Compute the density, specific weight,
and specific gravity of the oil.
[ Answers. ρoil = 900 kg/m3, γoil = 8829 N/m3, SG = 0.9]

2. If the density of a liquid is 837 kg/m3, find its weight per unit
volume and relative density.
[Answers. 8210 N/m3, 0.837]

3. The density of oil is 855 kg/m3. Calculate the specific gravity

and the kinematics viscosity if the dynamic viscosity of the
oil is 5 x 10-3 Ns/m2.
Exercises
4. The relative density of ethyl alcohol is 0.79. Determine the
density and specific weight of the alcohol.

5. Calculate the specific weight, density and specific gravity of a

liquid having a volume of 6 m3 and weight of 44 kN.

6. The oil with the volume of 5.6 m3 have a weight equal to

46 800 N. Determine it density and specific gravity.

7. A liquid has a specific gravity of 1.9 and kinematic viscosity

of 6 stokes. What is its dynamic viscosity?
Compressibility and Bulk modulus
 In thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, compressibility is a
measure of the relative volume change of a fluid as a response
to a pressure change.
 Bulk modulus is inverse of the compressibility but can be used
to characterize the compressibility of fluid.
 It is defined as,

 where dp is the differential change in pressure needed to

create a differential change in volume dV, of a volume V.
 Because dV/V is dimensionless, therefore the units of bulk
modulus is in pressure unit N/m2 (Pa).
Bulk modulus
 Large values for the bulk modulus indicate that the fluid is
relatively incompressible - that is, it takes a large pressure
change to create a small change in volume.
 For example : at atmospheric pressure and a temperature of
288 K it would require a pressure of 21.5 MPa to compress a
unit volume of water at 1%. This result is representative of the
compressibility of liquids.
 Since such large pressures are required to effect a change in
volume, we conclude that liquids can be considered as
incompressible for most practical engineering applications.
Vapor pressure
 The vapor pressure of a liquid is defined as the pressure
exerted by the molecules that escapes from the liquid to form
a separate vapor phase above the liquid surface.
 If the container is closed with a small air space left above the
surface, and this space evacuated to form a vacuum, a pressure
will develop in the space as a result of the vapor that is formed
by the escaping molecules.

31 BDA 20603 SEM 2 2015/2016

Vapor pressure
 When an equilibrium condition is reached so that the number
of molecules leaving the surface is equal to the number
entering, the vapor is said to be saturated and the pressure
that the vapor exerts on the liquid surface is termed the vapor
pressure, Pv.
 This vapor pressure is influenced by the temperature and the
nature of the liquid.
 Some liquid consist of molecules that have very weak
attractive forces between them.
 These liquids evaporate easily (volatile) thus have higher vapor
pressure.

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Surface tension, σs
 Surface tension can be defined as the intensity of intermolecular
attraction (attraction force) per unit length along the free
surface of a fluid.
 The effect is caused by unbalanced cohesive forces at fluid
surfaces which produce a downward resultant force which can
physically seen as a skin or membrane.
 Surface tension is a fluid property and it is depends on the
temperature and also on the type of the solid interface.
 For example, a drop of water on a glass surface will have a
different coefficient from the similar amount of water on a
wood surface.
 Unit : N/m (Force per unit length)
 Values of surface tension decreases as the temperature
increases.

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Capillary Effect
 Capillary = such narrow tubes or
confined flow channels.
 The rise or fall of a liquid in this
small-diameter tube or channel is
called capillary effect.