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978-0-521-13289-3 - Understanding Fluid Flow: AIMS Library Series

Grae Worster
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U N D E R S TA N D I N G
F L U I D F LO W

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Grae Worster
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978-0-521-13289-3 - Understanding Fluid Flow: AIMS Library Series
Grae Worster
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African Institute of Mathematics Library Series

The African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), founded in

2003 in Muizenberg, South Africa, provides a one-year postgraduate
course in mathematical sciences for students throughout the continent of
Africa. The AIMS LIBRARY SERIES is a series of short innovative
texts, suitable for self-study, on the mathematical sciences and their
applications in the broadest sense.

Editorial Board
Professor J. Banasiak (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Professor A.F. Beardon (University of Cambridge)
Professor P. Deift (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences)
Professor P.E. Dorey (Durham University)
Professor B.W. Green (University of Stellenbosch)
Professor F.W. Hahne (The Director, AIMS)
Professor A. Iserles (University of Cambridge)
Professor P.E. Kopp (University of Hull)
Professor P. Sarnak (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton)
Dr. T. Tokieda (University of Cambridge)
Professor N.G. Turok (University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute,
Ontario)

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Grae Worster
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-13289-3 - Understanding Fluid Flow: AIMS Library Series
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AIMS Library Series

U N D E R S TA N D I N G
F LU I D F LOW

G RAE WOR STE R

Institute of Theoretical Geophysics
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
University of Cambridge

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The Water Club, Beach Road, Granger Bay, Cape Town 8005, South Africa

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© Cambridge University Press 2009
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2009
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isbn 978-0-521-13289-3 Paperback
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of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
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Contents

Preface page xi

1 Building intuition 1
Viscous fluids 1
Normal stress 3
The no-slip condition 3
A viscous gravity current 4
Dynamic viscosity 5
Tangential shear stress 6
Assignment 1 7

2 Parallel viscous flow 9

Momentum equation 9
Boundary conditions 10
Parallel flow in a channel 11
Poiseuille flow in a pipe 13
Film flow on a vertical surface 15
Couette versus Poiseuille 16
Unsteady parallel viscous flows 18
Kinematic viscosity 22
Viscous boundary layers 23

3 Viscous gravity currents 25

Scaling analysis 27
Velocity profile and volume flux 27
Conservation of mass 28

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Contents

Similarity solution 29
Assignment 2 31

4 Equations of flow 37
The Navier–Stokes momentum equation 37
Hydrostatic and dynamic pressure 39
Mass conservation 40
Stream functions 42
Scaling the Navier–Stokes equations 45
Stagnation-point flow 49
Viscous boundary layer 50
Bernoulli’s theorem 54
The momentum integral 57

5 Interactions between linear flows 63

Linear flow 63
Pure straining flow 64
Vorticity 65
The vorticity equation 65
Vortex stretching 66
Dissipation and generation of vorticity 68

6 Flows around rigid objects 71

Irrotational incompressible potential flow 71
Potential flow past a sphere 71
The force in potential flow 73
Flow separation and drag 74
The origin of separation 75
Circulation around a rigid body 77
Irrotational flow with circulation – causing lift 79

7 Waves and instability 83

Energy conservation in potential flow 83
Waves on deep water 84
Properties of deep-water waves 86
Ship wakes 88
Group velocity 90

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Contents

Hydrodynamic instability 92
Turbulence 98

Epilogue 100
Bibliography 101
Index 103

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xi

Preface

This book is an account of lectures that I gave at AIMS (the African

Institute of Mathematical Sciences) in 2008, which were developed
from two earlier courses I had given there in 2004 and 2006. I did not
set out to write a textbook but rather to present a diary, summarising
and reviewing what I had tried to convey to the students in the hour or
two immediately preceding writing. This reflects the fact that lectures
at AIMS are dynamic, interactive sessions and I had prepared little by
way of formal lecture notes in advance. To be sure, there was some
didactic delivery of ideas, but that lecturing activity was interspersed
with problem-solving activities and many, many questions from stu-
dents so that the educational process was much more of a conversation
than is typical of most university courses I have given. Having now put
this material in writing, I hope that it might interest and inspire students
and teachers alike but will not constrain or encourage future lecturers
at AIMS or elsewhere to teach rigidly from the book.
Where, in the course of writing, I discovered some small point that
I had omitted to mention or some additional clarification or illustration
that I felt would be helpful, I allowed myself to include it. Other than
that, I have made no attempt to expand upon what I taught or to provide
a comprehensive introduction to fluid dynamics. A student interested
in pursuing the ideas further should consult any of the many excellent
texts that exist in this subject, a few of which are described in the
Bibliography.
In my view, fluid dynamics as a discipline sits squarely between
physics and mathematics. It is important to understand the physical
interactions involved well enough to codify them within mathematical

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xii Preface

equations, and to have sufficient mathematical insight to know whether

the equations are likely to be manageable. The equations must then be
solved, often by making approximations with enough physical insight
to know whether the important interactions have been retained, and
with enough mathematical rigour to have confidence in the resulting
predictions. And finally, the mathematical solution must be interpreted
in a way that sheds light on the physical problem being studied. I tried
to convey that balance in the course, with the result that this is neither
a physics text nor a mathematics text but a text aimed at understanding
fluid flow from fundamental physical ideas explained and developed by
mathematical studies.
I anticipate that readers will have a basic understanding of Newto-
nian dynamics, and be familiar with ordinary differential equations and
vector calculus to the level usually taught in introductory undergraduate
courses.
The first two times that I lectured at AIMS, I shared the three-week
course with another lecturer: Daya Reddy from the University of Cape
Town in 2004 and Keith Moffatt from Cambridge University in 2006.
I nevertheless wanted my half course to be complete in itself and to
convey something meaningful about fluid dynamics as an important
topic of current research to students who had never met the subject
before. I felt it important that the students learn about real, viscous fluids,
to have a taste of analytical, numerical and experimental approaches to
understanding and quantifying the flow of fluids, and to experience
the satisfaction and some of the limitations of making mathematical
predictions of experimental flows.
To these ends, I took as a case study the spreading of a pool of
syrup poured onto a horizontal surface. This is a relatively straightfor-
ward and robust experiment that can be done in class by inexperienced
students; it introduces a fundamental balance between pressure gradi-
ents and viscous stresses; and the equations describing the flow can
be solved analytically and also numerically using simple methods. The
major assignments given to the students to be completed outside of
the classroom combined all of these aspects. I have reproduced the
assignments here but have deliberately not provided any form of model
answers. There is a tremendous amount of teaching that can be achieved
through such extended and open-ended projects and I do not wish to
circumscribe those opportunities.

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Preface xiii

The first assignment involves analysing data from experiments. I

encourage students to try setting up and running these for themselves,
from which they will gain first-hand experience of some fluid flows.
Failing that, measurements can be made from recorded experiments
available at http://www.cambridge.org/worster.
I have included within the text the data taken by students at AIMS,
which could also be used to complete the assignment, though allowance
must then be made for human error, an appreciation of which will
perhaps be missed by those students not performing the experiments
themselves.
The lectures and activities associated with the case study took up the
first week of the course and form the first three chapters of this book. A
more conventional approach to teaching fluid dynamics begins at Chap-
ter 4 with a statement of the Navier–Stokes equations and discussions
of the physical interactions they embody. I designed much of the central
part of the course around the flow associated with a stagnation point
on a rigid flat plate. This flow illustrates the role of dynamic pressure
in enforcing mass conservation in an incompressible fluid, and also
introduces key ideas about viscous boundary layers and the inviscid
approximation away from boundaries.
In the third week of the course I aimed to introduce a number of
significant phenomena of which I feel every fluid dynamicist should
be aware: the dynamics of vorticity; d’Alembert’s paradox and its res-
olution in terms of separation of viscous boundary layers; lift on an
aerofoil; water waves and instability.
There are a number of short exercises scattered throughout the book.
They are important and should be read as an integral part of the text
even if not attempted until later. Many of them were given to students
to solve in class. I have generally not included solutions. However, in
some cases I wanted students to discover important ideas for themselves
but, since these ideas were key foundational material, I also lectured on
them subsequently. In such cases, I have provided some discussion of
the solution here, but I encourage any students reading this book to try
the exercises for themselves first.
In preparing these lectures I drew significantly on my own experi-
ences as a student and the inspiration given to me by the many excellent
lecturers from whom I was privileged to learn aspects of fluid dynam-
ics: John Hinch in Part IB; George Batchelor, Michael McIntyre and

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xiv Preface

Michael Proctor in Part II; and Adrian Gill, Douglas Gough, Herbert
Huppert, Tim Pedley and Ron Smith in Part III of the Cambridge Math-
ematics Tripos. I have also drawn many of the examples and exercises
from those used in the Tripos. I thank all my colleagues who have con-
tributed to and moulded the excellent stock of pedagogical questions
designed and refined there over the years.
I am extremely grateful to AIMS students Khumbo Kumwenda,
Doreen Mbabazi and Mercy Njima who prepared some of the figures
and tables for inclusion in an early draft of the notes, and to Mark
Hallworth who prepared all the figures for publication. Mark was also
invaluable in setting up the experiments and preparing the videos of
them, assisted by Andrew Lawrie. The text was much improved follow-
ing valuable input from Colm Caulfield, Herbert Huppert, Richard Katz,
Keith Moffatt, Jerome Neufeld and John Wettlaufer, to all of whom I
am indebted. In particular, Colm lectured this course at AIMS in 2009
and gave me invaluable feedback based on his experience. I could not
have undertaken this project without the able assistance of Doris Allen
who shouldered the considerable burden of setting everything in LaTeX.
And finally, I am grateful to my wife Jacqui and daughters Susannah,
Lizzie, Katherine and Caroline, who allowed me time in South Africa
without them.

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