Faculty Development Programme

on Fluid Mechanics and

Machinery

Fluid Properties

By
Dr. C. Senthil Kumar
Assistant Professor (SG)
Department of Aerospace Engg.
MIT, Anna University
 Definition
Fluid mechanics is a branch of physics concerned with
the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases and plasmas) and the forces on
them. Fluid mechanics has a wide range of applications,
including mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical
engineering, geophysics, astrophysics and biology.
Fluid mechanics 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.
It is a branch of continuum mechanics, a subject which models
matter without using the information that it is made out of atoms;
that is, it models matter from a macroscopic viewpoint rather than
from microscopic.
 Brief History
 The study of fluid mechanics goes back at least to the days of ancient
Greece, when Archimedes investigated fluid statics and buoyancy and
formulated his famous law known as the Archimedes' principle. Rapid
advancement in fluid mechanics began with Leonardo da Vinci, Evangelista
Torricelli (invented the barometer), Isaac Newton (investigated viscosity)
and Blaise Pascal (formulated Pascal's law), and was continued by Daniel
Bernoulli (1738).
 Inviscid flow was analyzed by mathematicians (Leonhard Euler, Jean le Rond
d'Alembert, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Siméon Denis
Poisson) and viscous flow was explored by a multitude
of engineers including Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille and Gotthilf Hagen.
Further mathematical justification was provided by Claude-Louis
Navier and George Gabriel Stokes in the Navier–Stokes equations,
and boundary layers were investigated (Ludwig Prandtl, Theodore von
Kármán), while various scientists such as Osborne Reynolds, Andrey
Kolmogorov, and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor advanced the understanding of
fluid viscosity and turbulence.
 Why are we studying FM?
 Water services such as the supply of potable water, drainage, sewerage
are essential for the development of industrial society. It is these services
which civil engineers provide.
 Fluid mechanics is involved in nearly all areas of Civil Engineering either
directly or indirectly.
 Some examples of direct involvement are those where we are concerned
with manipulating the fluid:
 Sea and river (flood) defences;
Water distribution / sewerage (sanitation) networks;
Dams; Irrigation; Pumps and Turbines;
 And some examples where the primary object is construction - yet
analysis of the fluid mechanics is essential:
 Flow of air in / around buildings;
Bridge piers in rivers;
 System of Units
 As any quantity can be expressed in whatever way you like it is
sometimes easy to become confused as to what exactly or how
much is being referred to. Over the years many different ways
have been used to express the various quantities involved. Even
today different countries use different terminology as well as
different units for the same thing - they even use the same name
for different things e.g. an American pint is 4/5 of a British pint!
 To avoid any confusion on this course we will always use the SI
(metric) system. It is essential that all quantities are expressed in
the same system or the wrong solutions will results.
 What make FM different to SM?
 The nature of a fluid is different to that of a solid, In fluids we deal
with continuous streams of fluid. Whereas, in solids we only consider
individual elements.
 Fluids flow under the action of a force, and the solids don’t - but
solids do deform. So we can say that fluids lack the ability of
solids to resist deformation.

Forces acting along edges (faces), such as F, are know as shearing forces.

A Fluid is a substance which deforms continuously, or flows, when

subjected to shearing forces.
 Liquids vs. Gasses
Liquids and gasses behave in much the same way.
Some specific differences are;
1. A liquid is difficult to compress and often regarded as being
incompressible.
A gas is easily to compress and usually treated as such - it
changes volume with pressure.

2. A given mass of liquid occupies a given volume and will form

a free surface
A gas has no fixed volume, it changes volume to expand to fill
the containing vessel. No free surface is formed.

3. Changes in viscosity of gases and liquids are different.

 Properties of Fluids
Density: There are three ways of expressing density.

1. Mass density

2. Specific Weight (sometimes known as specific gravity)

3. Relative Density
Thank you