The following is a series of commentary/lecture notes designed to provide a conceptual introduction to the study of fluid mechanics. I encourage readers to use them in conjunction with a traditional, more comprehensive text; my presentation is both highly unorthodox and prioritizes conceptual clarity and consistency over detail and numerical examples. A book made from these notes, which includes references & additional reading, can be found here.
If you learn something useful from these notes, please help a junior scientist out and cite them!
- Part I: Fluid Concepts
- Part II: Pressure & Hydrostatics
- Part III: Buoyancy
- Part IV: Control Volume Analysis
- Part V: Hydraulics
- Part VI: Transport Theory
- Intermezzo: Tensors
- Part VII: Rheology
- Part VIII: Navier-Stokes, Existence & Uniqueness
- Part IX: Pipe Flow & Turbulence
- Part X: Dimensional Analysis
- Part XI: Far Field & Irrotational Flow
- Part XII: Near Field & Creeping Flow
- Part XIII: Boundary Layers, Lift & Drag
- Lagniappe: Compressible Flow
Some books I recommend as possible parallel reading are:
- Kirby’s “How Fluids Work“
- Janna’s “Introduction to Fluid Mechanics“
- Deen’s “Analysis of Transport Phenomena“
- Aris’s “Vectors, Tensors and the Basic Equations of Fluid Mechanics“