PHY306 - Fluid Mechanics (2022-2023)

Prerequisite: PHY101, PHY102, PHY105
Recommended previous course:
PHY201, PHY206
The motion of fluids plays a critical role
in many phenomena or processes that are
the center of our daily life or engineering
systems, ranging from the flight and/or
propulsion of aircrafts and vessels, the
generation of electricity from wind-turbines,
the flow of blood in our arteries,
the atmospheric and ocean circulations
guiding our climate or microscopic flows
in lab-on-a-chip systems. This course will
provide the students the fundamental
tools to model, understand and analyze
the motion of such fluid flows in three
dimensions, and evaluate the resulting
forces on the bounding surfaces.
The material covered in this course will
build upon several courses of the program
including Mechanics and Heat (PHY101),
Mathematical Methods for Physicists I
and II (PHY102 and PHY105), Classical
Mechanics (PHY201) and Waves and
Heat Transfer in Geophysics (PHY206).
The following subjects are expected to be
treated:
❯ Eulerian description of motion of 3D
flows
❯ Mass and momentum conservation
❯ Hydrostatic pressure
❯ Viscosity and viscous stresses
❯ Motion of a Newtonian fluid: Navier-
Stokes equations
❯ Non-dimensional analysis and scalings
❯ Parallel and weakly-non parallel flows
❯ Inviscid flows and potential flow theory
❯ Vorticity
❯ Introduction to boundary layers.