Advanced Fluid Mechanics 3: Potential Flows & Boundary Layers

Advanced Fluid Mechanics 3: Potential Flows & Boundary Layers

This course covers potential flow analysis for inviscid flows, the generation of vorticity in viscous boundary layers, connections between circulation and lift, generation of drag in the boundary layer, geometric effects in flow separation, and transition to turbulence. A separate final short module briefly introduces the role of surface tension in engineering fluid mechanics. This course features lecture and demo videos, lecture concept checks, practice problems, and extensive problem sets.

This course is the final module of a three-course sequence in incompressible fluid mechanics: Advanced Fluid Mechanics:1. Fundamentals; Advanced Fluid Mechanics: 2. The Navier-Stokes Equations for Viscous Flows, and Advanced Fluid Mechanics: 3. Potential Flows, Lift, Circulation & Boundary Layers. The series is based on material in MIT’s class 2.25 Advanced Fluid Mechanics, one of the most popular first-year graduate classes in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department. This series is designed to help people gain the ability to apply the governing equations, the principles of dimensional analysis and scaling theory to develop physically-based, approximate models of complex fluid physics phenomena. People who complete these three consecutive courses will be able to apply their knowledge to analyze and break down complex problems they may encounter in industrial and academic research settings.