Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Incompressible Fluid Mechanics: Foundations and Flow Equations

In course

ME-344: Incompressible fluid mechanics

Basic lecture in incompressible fluid mechanics ...

Description

This lecture introduces the foundations of incompressible fluid mechanics, aiming to provide a quantitative description of flow problems. The course covers integral and differential conservation laws, deriving general flow equations and solving them. The schedule includes topics like hydrostatics, Bernoulli's principle, diffusion, fluid kinematics, and more. The instructor emphasizes the importance of exercises, discussions, and self-study to grasp the theory and prepare for simulations in computational fluid dynamics.

Instructor

Tobias Schneider

Tobias Schneider is an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. He received his doctoral degree in theoretical physics in 2007 from the University of Marburg in Germany working on the transition to turbulence in pipe flow. He then joined Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2012 Tobias Schneider returned to Europe to establish an independent Max-Planck research group at the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen. Since 2014, he is working at EPFL, where he teaches fluid mechanics and heads the 'Emergent Complexity in Physical Systems' laboratory. Tobias Schneider's research is focused on nonlinear mechanics with specific emphasis on spatial turbulent-laminar patterns in fluid flows transitioning to turbulence. His lab combines dynamical systems and pattern-formation theory with large-scale computer simulations. Together with his team, Schneider develops computational tools and continuation methods for studying the bifurcation structure of nonlinear differential equations such as those describing the flow of a fluid. These tools are published as open-source software at channelflow.ch. Publications: Google Scholar

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Mechanics: Fluid mechanics

Related concepts (31)

Fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical, and biomedical engineering, as well as geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics, and biology. It can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion.

Navier–Stokes equations

The Navier–Stokes equations (nævˈjeː_stəʊks ) are partial differential equations which describe the motion of viscous fluid substances, named after French engineer and physicist Claude-Louis Navier and Irish physicist and mathematician George Gabriel Stokes. They were developed over several decades of progressively building the theories, from 1822 (Navier) to 1842-1850 (Stokes). The Navier–Stokes equations mathematically express momentum balance and conservation of mass for Newtonian fluids.

Potential flow

In fluid dynamics, potential flow (or ideal flow) describes the velocity field as the gradient of a scalar function: the velocity potential. As a result, a potential flow is characterized by an irrotational velocity field, which is a valid approximation for several applications. The irrotationality of a potential flow is due to the curl of the gradient of a scalar always being equal to zero. In the case of an incompressible flow the velocity potential satisfies Laplace's equation, and potential theory is applicable.

Fluid dynamics

In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including aerodynamics (the study of air and other gases in motion) and hydrodynamics (the study of liquids in motion). Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modelling fission weapon detonation.

Incompressible flow

In fluid mechanics or more generally continuum mechanics, incompressible flow (isochoric flow) refers to a flow in which the material density is constant within a fluid parcel—an infinitesimal volume that moves with the flow velocity. An equivalent statement that implies incompressibility is that the divergence of the flow velocity is zero (see the derivation below, which illustrates why these conditions are equivalent). Incompressible flow does not imply that the fluid itself is incompressible.

Related lectures (35)

Inviscid Flows: Understanding Fluid Dynamics

Explores inviscid flows, Reynolds number importance, linear deformations, and volume change in fluid dynamics.

Fluid Mechanics: Foundations and Applications

Covers the foundations of fluid mechanics, focusing on flow problem descriptions and solutions.

Fluid Dynamics: Differential Conservation Laws and Equations

Covers the differential approach to fluid dynamics, focusing on conservation laws and the Cauchy stress tensor.

Symmetries and Conservation Laws

Covers symmetries and conservation laws in fluid dynamics, emphasizing the importance of maximizing symmetries in ideal fluid systems.

Fluid Dynamics: Bernoulli Equation