Kinematics of fluids

This free course examines the basic kinematics of two-dimensional fluid flows. Section 1 introduces the differential equations for pathlines and streamlines. Section 2 introduces a scalar field, called the stream function, which for an incompressible fluid provides an alternative method of modelling the flow and finding the streamlines. Sections 2 and 3 derive the stream functions for several simple two-dimensional flow types (the uniform flow, source, doublet and vortex), and suitable combinations of these are used to model more complicated flows. Section 4 introduces the idea of differentiation following the motion, and Euler’s equation is developed in Section 5.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• Link to course PDF
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements