In physics, engineering and mathematics, the Fourier transform (FT) is an integral transform that takes a function as input and outputs another function that describes the extent to which various frequencies are present in the original function. The output of the transform is a complex-valued function of frequency. The term Fourier transform refers to both this complex-valued function and the mathematical operation. When a distinction needs to be made the Fourier transform is sometimes called the frequency domain representation of the original function. The Fourier transform is analogous to decomposing the sound of a musical chord into the intensities of its constituent pitches.
In fluid dynamics, potential flow or irrotational flow refers to a description of a fluid flow with no vorticity in it. Such a description typically arises in the limit of vanishing viscosity, i.e., for an inviscid fluid and with no vorticity present in the flow.
In mathematics and classical mechanics, the Poisson bracket is an important binary operation in Hamiltonian mechanics, playing a central role in Hamilton's equations of motion, which govern the time evolution of a Hamiltonian dynamical system. The Poisson bracket also distinguishes a certain class of coordinate transformations, called canonical transformations, which map canonical coordinate systems into canonical coordinate systems. A "canonical coordinate system" consists of canonical position and momentum variables that satisfy canonical Poisson bracket relations. The set of possible canonical transformations is always very rich. For instance, it is often possible to choose the Hamiltonian itself as one of the new canonical momentum coordinates.
In Hamiltonian mechanics, a canonical transformation is a change of canonical coordinates (q, p) → that preserves the form of Hamilton's equations. This is sometimes known as form invariance. Although Hamilton's equations are preserved, it need not preserve the explicit form of the Hamiltonian itself. Canonical transformations are useful in their own right, and also form the basis for the Hamilton–Jacobi equations and Liouville's theorem.
In classical statistical mechanics, the equipartition theorem relates the temperature of a system to its average energies. The equipartition theorem is also known as the law of equipartition, equipartition of energy, or simply equipartition. The original idea of equipartition was that, in thermal equilibrium, energy is shared equally among all of its various forms; for example, the average kinetic energy per degree of freedom in translational motion of a molecule should equal that in rotational motion.
The Drude model of electrical conduction was proposed in 1900 by Paul Drude to explain the transport properties of electrons in materials. Basically, Ohm's law was well established and stated that the current J and voltage V driving the current are related to the resistance R of the material. The inverse of the resistance is known as the conductance. When we consider a metal of unit length and unit cross sectional area, the conductance is known as the conductivity, which is the inverse of resistivity. The Drude model attempts to explain the resistivity of a conductor in terms of the scattering of electrons by the relatively immobile ions in the metal that act like obstructions to the flow of electrons.
Fracture mechanics is the field of mechanics concerned with the study of the propagation of cracks in materials. It uses methods of analytical solid mechanics to calculate the driving force on a crack and those of experimental solid mechanics to characterize the material's resistance to fracture.
In materials science, shear modulus or modulus of rigidity, denoted by G, or sometimes S or μ, is a measure of the elastic shear stiffness of a material and is defined as the ratio of shear stress to the shear strain:
In physics and fluid mechanics, a Blasius boundary layer describes the steady two-dimensional laminar boundary layer that forms on a semi-infinite plate which is held parallel to a constant unidirectional flow. Falkner and Skan later generalized Blasius' solution to wedge flow, i.e. flows in which the plate is not parallel to the flow.
The lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM), originated from the lattice gas automata (LGA) method (Hardy-Pomeau-Pazzis and Frisch-Hasslacher-Pomeau models), is a class of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods for fluid simulation. Instead of solving the Navier–Stokes equations directly, a fluid density on a lattice is simulated with streaming and collision (relaxation) processes. The method is versatile as the model fluid can straightforwardly be made to mimic common fluid behaviour like vapour/liquid coexistence, and so fluid systems such as liquid droplets can be simulated. Also, fluids in complex environments such as porous media can be straightforwardly simulated, whereas with complex boundaries other CFD methods can be hard to work with.
The Avrami equation describes how solids transform from one phase to another at constant temperature. It can specifically describe the kinetics of crystallisation, can be applied generally to other changes of phase in materials, like chemical reaction rates, and can even be meaningful in analyses of ecological systems.
A yield surface is a five-dimensional surface in the six-dimensional space of stresses. The yield surface is usually convex and the state of stress of inside the yield surface is elastic. When the stress state lies on the surface the material is said to have reached its yield point and the material is said to have become plastic. Further deformation of the material causes the stress state to remain on the yield surface, even though the shape and size of the surface may change as the plastic deformation evolves. This is because stress states that lie outside the yield surface are non-permissible in rate-independent plasticity, though not in some models of viscoplasticity.
Critical state soil mechanics is the area of soil mechanics that encompasses the conceptual models representing the mechanical behavior of saturated remoulded soils based on the critical state concept. At the critical state, the relationship between forces applied in the soil (stress), and the resulting deformation resulting from this stress (strain) becomes constant. The soil will continue to deform, but the stress will no longer increase.
Viscoplasticity is a theory in continuum mechanics that describes the rate-dependent inelastic behavior of solids. Rate-dependence in this context means that the deformation of the material depends on the rate at which loads are applied. The inelastic behavior that is the subject of viscoplasticity is plastic deformation which means that the material undergoes unrecoverable deformations when a load level is reached. Rate-dependent plasticity is important for transient plasticity calculations. The main difference between rate-independent plastic and viscoplastic material models is that the latter exhibit not only permanent deformations after the application of loads but continue to undergo a creep flow as a function of time under the influence of the applied load.
Material failure theory is an interdisciplinary field of materials science and solid mechanics which attempts to predict the conditions under which solid materials fail under the action of external loads. The failure of a material is usually classified into brittle failure (fracture) or ductile failure (yield). Depending on the conditions most materials can fail in a brittle or ductile manner or both. However, for most practical situations, a material may be classified as either brittle or ductile.
The Langmuir adsorption model explains adsorption by assuming an adsorbate behaves as an ideal gas at isothermal conditions. According to the model, adsorption and desorption are reversible processes. This model even explains the effect of pressure i.e. at these conditions the adsorbate's partial pressure is related to its volume V adsorbed onto a solid adsorbent. The adsorbent, as indicated in the figure, is assumed to be an ideal solid surface composed of a series of distinct sites capable of binding the adsorbate. The adsorbate binding is treated as a chemical reaction between the adsorbate gaseous molecule and an empty sorption site S. This reaction yields an adsorbed species with an associated equilibrium constant :
Quantum characteristics are phase-space trajectories that arise in the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics through the Wigner transform of Heisenberg operators of canonical coordinates and momenta. These trajectories obey the Hamilton equations in quantum form and play the role of characteristics in terms of which time-dependent Weyl's symbols of quantum operators can be expressed. In the classical limit, quantum characteristics reduce to classical trajectories. The knowledge of quantum characteristics is equivalent to the knowledge of quantum dynamics.
In theoretical physics, relativistic Lagrangian mechanics is Lagrangian mechanics applied in the context of special relativity and general relativity.
In continuum mechanics, objective stress rates are time derivatives of stress that do not depend on the frame of reference. Many constitutive equations are designed in the form of a relation between a stress-rate and a strain-rate. The mechanical response of a material should not depend on the frame of reference. In other words, material constitutive equations should be frame-indifferent (objective). If the stress and strain measures are material quantities then objectivity is automatically satisfied. However, if the quantities are spatial, then the objectivity of the stress-rate is not guaranteed even if the strain-rate is objective.
In fluid dynamics, Green's law, named for 19th-century British mathematician George Green, is a conservation law describing the evolution of non-breaking, surface gravity waves propagating in shallow water of gradually varying depth and width. In its simplest form, for wavefronts and depth contours parallel to each other, it states:
