Fluid Mechanics and its Applications (Paperback)

This book is written as a first course in fluid mechanics for undergraduate engineering students in all disciplines. It has been our experience over a number of years of teaching that the students consider fluid mechanics to be one of the most difficult subjects to grasp. Fluid mechanics as a subject is rather tricky, requiring a large number of concepts to be invoked for solving even simple-looking problems. Also, the wide varieties of phenomena that are involved, with the flow behaviour changing suddenly with small changes in the values of parameters, make the subject frustrating to a beginner. Several popular textbooks, in their attempt to make concepts rigorous and elegant, delve to great depths into the mathematics of fluid flow using vector and even tensor calculus. But in doing so the emphasis shifts, often unintentionally, from the phenomena themselves to the mathematics. We believe that fluid-mechanical phenomena are complex enough requiring the full attention of the students without it being diverted by the demands of the newlylearnt mathematical tools which come in the way of developing a physical feel of the subject. It is because of this reason that we have kept the level of mathematics in this text to a minimum. We have used vector calculus only sparingly, and for this we have restricted most derivations to two dimensions only, extending the results to the third dimension. We believe the elegance of vectorial or tensorial mathematics can be safely left to a second course, after the student has a firm grasp of the fundamental physical concepts.