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Mechanics of Fluids

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100 The principles governing fluids in motion<br />

3. Heat and shaft work are transferred to or from the fluid at a constant<br />

net rate.<br />

4. Quantities are uniform over the inlet and outlet cross-sections 1 and 2.<br />

5. Energy due to electricity, magnetism, surface tension or nuclear reaction<br />

is absent. If energy due to any <strong>of</strong> these phenomena is, in fact, involved<br />

appropriate additional terms will appear in the equations.<br />

No assumptions are made about details <strong>of</strong> the flow pattern between inlet<br />

and outlet and no assumption is made about the presence or absence <strong>of</strong> friction<br />

between inlet and outlet. The restrictions <strong>of</strong> assumptions 1 and 2 may in<br />

practice be slightly relaxed. Fluctuations in conditions are permissible if they<br />

occur through a definite cycle so that identical conditions are again reached<br />

periodically. This happens in fluid machinery operating at constant speed<br />

and torque. Flow in the neighbourhood <strong>of</strong> the moving blades or pistons <strong>of</strong><br />

the machine is cyclic rather than absolutely steady. In other words, the conditions<br />

at any particular point in the fluid vary with time in a manner, which<br />

is regularly repeated at a certain frequency. In such a case the equation may<br />

be used to relate values <strong>of</strong> the quantities averaged over a time considerably<br />

longer than the period <strong>of</strong> one cycle.<br />

In practice, assumption 4 is never completely justified since viscous forces<br />

cause the velocity to fall rapidly to zero at a solid boundary. Thermodynamic<br />

properties may also vary somewhat over the cross-section. To allow for these<br />

effects, appropriate correction factors may be introduced – for example, the<br />

kinetic energy correction factor α we shall mention in Section 3.5.3. However,<br />

the use <strong>of</strong> mean values <strong>of</strong> the velocity and other quantities normally<br />

yields results <strong>of</strong> sufficient accuracy.<br />

3.5.3 The kinetic energy correction factor<br />

In investigating many problems <strong>of</strong> fluid dynamics it is frequently assumed<br />

that the flow is one-dimensional; in other words, all the fluid is regarded<br />

as being within a single large stream-tube in which the velocity is uniform<br />

over the cross-section. The value <strong>of</strong> the kinetic energy divided by mass is<br />

then calculated as u2 /2 where u represents the mean velocity, that is, the<br />

total discharge divided by the cross-sectional area <strong>of</strong> the flow. The only<br />

situation in which use <strong>of</strong> this mean velocity would be completely justified is<br />

that represented by the relation:<br />

�� �<br />

m u 2 = � (mu 2 )<br />

where m represents the mass and u the velocity <strong>of</strong> fluid in a short length <strong>of</strong><br />

a small individual stream-tube while u represents the mean velocity over the<br />

entire cross-section <strong>of</strong> the flow (= � (mu)/ � m).<br />

This equation, it may be shown, is satisfied only when all the us are equal,<br />

a condition never reached in practice because <strong>of</strong> the action <strong>of</strong> viscosity.<br />

The error involved in using the mean velocity to calculate the kinetic energy<br />

divided by mass may be estimated as follows.<br />

Instead <strong>of</strong> the entire cross-section, consider first a small element <strong>of</strong> it whose<br />

area δA is small enough for there to be no appreciable variation <strong>of</strong> velocity<br />

u over it. The discharge through this small element is therefore uδA and

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