FLUID KINEMATICS - Part 1

(Chapter 4)

Hasan Zobeyer, PhD, PEng, M.ASCE

Professor
Department of Water Resources Engineering
BUET

Course Notes provided by Dr. Weiming Wu

Objectives of Chapter 4

• Understand the role of the material derivative in

transforming between Lagrangian and Eulerian
descriptions.
• Distinguish between various types of flow visualizations
and methods of plotting the characteristics of a fluid
flow.
• Recognize the many ways that fluids move and deform.

• Distinguish between rotational and irrotational regions

of flow based on the flow property vorticity.

• Understand the usefulness of the Reynolds transport

theorem.

Dr Hasan Zobeyer 1
 Kinematics: The study of motion.
Fluid kinematics: The study of how fluids flow and how to describe fluid
motion.

Satellite image of a
hurricane near the
Florida coast; water
droplets move with
the air, enabling us to
visualize the
counterclockwise
eddy motion.

Recall of Vector Multiplications

       
Scalar product (dot V1  V2  (u1 i  v1 j  w1 k )  (u2 i  v2 j  w2 k )  u1 u2  v1 v2  w1 w2
product) :
   
V1  V2  V1 V2 cos  projection of V2 on V1

projection of V1 on V2
Scalar product (dot product) can be used to calculate the
projection of a vector in a given direction.

        
Vector product (cross V3  V1  V2  ( u1 i  v1 j  w 1 k )  (u 2 i  v 2 j  w 2 k )
  
product) : i j k
  
V3  V1  V2  u1 v1 w 1
u 2 v2 w 2
     
V3  V1  V2  ( v1w 2  v 2 w 1 ) i  ( u 1w 2  u 2 w 1 ) j  ( u 1 v 2  u 2 v1 ) k
    
V3  V1  V2  V1  V2 sin 

Vector product can be used for finding the area of

parallelogram formed by two vectors or to find a vector
perpendicular to the plane defined by two vectors.

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 Methods of Describing Fluid Motion

There are two distinct ways to describe motion: Lagrangian and

Eulerian
Lagrangian approach Eulerian approach
Joseph-Louis Lagrange Leonhard Euler
Born: 25 Jan 1736 in Turin, Born: 15 April 1707 in Basel,
Sardinia-Piedmont (now Italy) Switzerland
Died: 10 April 1813 in Paris, Died: 18 Sept 1783 in St
France Petersburg, Russia

http://www-gap.dcs.st- http://www-gap.dcs.st-
and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/L and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/E
agrange.html uler.html

Methods of Describing Fluid Motion

Lagrangian description: To follow the path of individual objects.

This method requires us to track the position and velocity of each individual
fluid parcel (fluid particle), which takes to be a parcel of fixed identity.

In the Lagrangian Identify a small

With a small number of description, one must mass of fluid in a
objects, such as billiard balls keep track of the position flow, called a “fluid
on a pool table, individual and velocity of individual particle”, and
objects can be tracked. particles. describe its
motion with time.

Dr Hasan Zobeyer 3
 Methods of Describing Fluid Motion
• In the Eulerian description of fluid flow, a finite volume called a flow domain
or control volume is defined.
• There is no need to keep track of the position and velocity of each fluid particle of
fixed identity, Only need to keep track the field variables from a particular
location and time.
• Field variables such as pressure, velocity, and acceleration field are
defined as a scalar field variable.

Pressure field

Velocity field

Acceleration field
Collectively, these (and other) field variables define
the flow field.
The velocity field can be expanded in Cartesian
coordinates as
Fix a point in the control
volume and describe the
velocity of the particles
passing through this point.

Methods of Describing Fluid Motion

• In the Eulerian description we don’t really care what happens to

individual fluid particles; rather we are concerned with the pressure,
velocity, acceleration, etc., of whichever fluid particle happens to be at
the location of interest at the time of interest.

• While there are many occasions in which the Lagrangian description is

useful, the Eulerian description is often more convenient for fluid
mechanics applications.

• Experimental measurements are generally more suited to the Eulerian

description.

Dr Hasan Zobeyer 4

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Acceleration Field
The acceleration of a fluid particle is the
rate of change of its velocity.
The equations of motion for fluid flow
(such as Newton’s second law) are
written for a fluid particle, which we
also call a material particle.
For example, we would define the
particle’s location in space in terms of a
material position vector (xparticle(t),
yparticle(t), zparticle(t)).
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Dr Hasan Zobeyer
Velocity vectors for the
velocity field of Example 4–1.
The scale is shown by the top
arrow, and the solid black
curves represent the
approximate shapes of some
streamlines, based on the
calculated velocity vectors.
The stagnation point is
indicated by the blue circle.
Newton’s second law applied to a fluid particle; the
acceleration vector (purple arrow) is in the same
direction as the force vector (green arrow), but the
velocity vector (blue arrow) may act in a different
direction.
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 Acceleration Field

When following a fluid particle,

the x-component of velocity, u, is
defined as dxparticle/dt.

Similarly, v=dyparticle/dt and

w=dzparticle/dt.
Movement is shown in the figure here
only in two dimensions for simplicity.

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Local Advective (convective)

acceleration acceleration

             
V    (u i  v j  w k )  ( i  j k)  u v w
x y z x y z
  
         V V V
 
V   V  u
x
v
 y
 w V  u
z x
v
 y
w
z
 

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 Acceleration Field

   
 V V V V
a u v w
t x y z

The components of the acceleration vector in cartesian

coordinates:

13

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 Material Derivative

The total derivative operator d/dt in this equation is given a special

name, the material derivative; it is assigned a special notation, D/Dt,
in order to emphasize that it is formed by following a fluid particle as it
moves through the flow field.
Other names for the material derivative include total, particle,
Lagrangian, Eulerian, and substantial derivative.

The material derivative D/Dt is

defined by following a fluid
particle as it moves throughout
the flow field. In this illustration,
the fluid particle is accelerating
to the right as it moves up and
to the right.

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Material Derivative

The material derivative

D/Dt is composed of a
local or unsteady part
and a convective or
advective part.

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