A force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F.
In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids — liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modelling fission weapon detonation.
When a fluid flows around an object, the fluid exerts a force on the object. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the force parallel to the flow direction. Lift conventionally acts in an upward direction in order to counter the force of gravity, but it is defined to act perpendicular to the flow and therefore can act in any direction.
In physics, potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors. The term potential energy was introduced by the 19th-century Scottish engineer and physicist William Rankine, although it has links to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's concept of potentiality.
Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity. When the cause of the convection is unspecified, convection due to the effects of thermal expansion and buoyancy can be assumed. Convection may also take place in soft solids or mixtures where particles can flow.
In fluid mechanics, hydrostatic equilibrium is the condition of a fluid or plastic solid at rest, which occurs when external forces, such as gravity, are balanced by a pressure-gradient force. In the planetary physics of Earth, the pressure-gradient force prevents gravity from collapsing the planetary atmosphere into a thin, dense shell, whereas gravity prevents the pressure-gradient force from diffusing the atmosphere into outer space. In general, it is what causes objects in space to be spherical.
Bernoulli's principle is a key concept in fluid dynamics that relates pressure, density, speed and height. Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed of a parcel of fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in either the pressure or the height above a datum. The principle is named after the Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli, who published it in his book Hydrodynamica in 1738. Although Bernoulli deduced that pressure decreases when the flow speed increases, it was Leonhard Euler in 1752 who derived Bernoulli's equation in its usual form.
In fluid dynamics, a vortex is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in the wake of a boat, and the winds surrounding a tropical cyclone, tornado or dust devil.
In fluid dynamics, the baroclinity of a stratified fluid is a measure of how misaligned the gradient of pressure is from the gradient of density in a fluid. In meteorology a baroclinic flow is one in which the density depends on both temperature and pressure. A simpler case, barotropic flow, allows for density dependence only on pressure, so that the curl of the pressure-gradient force vanishes.
In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. A gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, such as the gravitational force field exerted on another massive body. It has dimension of acceleration (L/T2) and it is measured in units of newtons per kilogram (N/kg) or, equivalently, in meters per second squared (m/s2).
Buoyancy, or upthrust is a net upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus, the pressure at the bottom of a column of fluid is greater than at the top of the column. Similarly, the pressure at the bottom of an object submerged in a fluid is greater than at the top of the object. The pressure difference results in a net upward force on the object. The magnitude of the force is proportional to the pressure difference, and is equivalent to the weight of the fluid that would otherwise occupy the submerged volume of the object, i.e. the displaced fluid.
The Magnus effect is a phenomenon that occurs when a spinning object is moving through a fluid. A lift force acts on the spinning object and its path may be deflected in a manner not present when it is not spinning. The strength and direction of the Magnus effect is dependent on the speed and direction of the rotation of the object.
Archimedes' principle states that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces. Archimedes' principle is a law of physics fundamental to fluid mechanics. It was formulated by Archimedes of Syracuse.
In mathematical physics, scalar potential describes the situation where the difference in the potential energies of an object in two different positions depends only on the positions, not upon the path taken by the object in traveling from one position to the other. It is a scalar field in three-space: a directionless value (scalar) that depends only on its location. A familiar example is potential energy due to gravity.
Fluid statics or hydrostatics is the branch of fluid mechanics that studies fluids at hydrostatic equilibrium and "the pressure in a fluid or exerted by a fluid on an immersed body".
In fluid mechanics, the pressure-gradient force is the force that results when there is a difference in pressure across a surface. In general, a pressure is a force per unit area across a surface. A difference in pressure across a surface then implies a difference in force, which can result in an acceleration according to Newton's second law of motion, if there is no additional force to balance it. The resulting force is always directed from the region of higher-pressure to the region of lower-pressure. When a fluid is in an equilibrium state, the system is referred to as being in hydrostatic equilibrium. In the case of atmospheres, the pressure-gradient force is balanced by the gravitational force, maintaining hydrostatic equilibrium. In Earth's atmosphere, for example, air pressure decreases at altitudes above Earth's surface, thus providing a pressure-gradient force which counteracts the force of gravity on the atmosphere.
Electrohydrodynamics (EHD), also known as electro-fluid-dynamics (EFD) or electrokinetics, is the study of the dynamics of electrically charged fluids. Electrohydrodynamics (EHD) is a joint domain of electrodynamics and fluid dynamics mainly focused on the fluid motion induced by electric fields. EHD, in its simplest form, involves the application of an electric field to a fluid medium, resulting in fluid flow, form, or properties manipulation. These mechanisms arise from the interaction between the electric fields and charged particles or polarization effects within the fluid. The generation and movement of charge carriers (ions) in a fluid subjected to an electric field are the underlying physics of all EHD-based technologies.
The shallow-water equations (SWE) are a set of hyperbolic partial differential equations that describe the flow below a pressure surface in a fluid. The shallow-water equations in unidirectional form are also called (de) Saint-Venant equations, after Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant.
Electrokinetic phenomena are a family of several different effects that occur in heterogeneous fluids, or in porous bodies filled with fluid, or in a fast flow over a flat surface. The term heterogeneous here means a fluid containing particles. Particles can be solid, liquid or gas bubbles with sizes on the scale of a micrometer or nanometer. There is a common source of all these effects—the so-called interfacial 'double layer' of charges. Influence of an external force on the diffuse layer generates tangential motion of a fluid with respect to an adjacent charged surface. This force might be electric, pressure gradient, concentration gradient, or gravity. In addition, the moving phase might be either continuous fluid or dispersed phase.
In science, a field is a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time. An example of a scalar field is a weather map, with the surface temperature described by assigning a number to each point on the map. A surface wind map, assigning an arrow to each point on a map that describes the wind speed and direction at that point, is an example of a vector field, i.e. a 1-dimensional (rank-1) tensor field. Field theories, mathematical descriptions of how field values change in space and time, are ubiquitous in physics. For instance, the electric field is another rank-1 tensor field, while electrodynamics can be formulated in terms of two interacting vector fields at each point in spacetime, or as a single-rank 2-tensor field.
