An interesting force in everyday life is the force of drag on an object when it is moving in a fluid. Like friction, the drag force always opposes the motion of an object. Unlike simple friction, the drag force is proportional to some function of the velocity of the object in that fluid. This functionality is complicated and depends upon the shape of the object, its size, its velocity, and the fluid it is in. For most large objects, such as cyclists, cars, and baseballs, that are not moving too...

When a fluid is in constant acceleration, the pressure and buoyant force equations are modified. Suppose a beaker is placed in an elevator accelerating upward with a constant acceleration, a. In the beaker, assume there is a thin cylinder of height h with an infinitesimal cross-sectional area, ΔS.
The motion of the liquid within this infinitesimal cylinder is considered to obtain the pressure difference. Three vertical forces act on this liquid:

Consider a control volume, such as a pipe with solid boundaries, through which fluid flows and changes direction due to the impulse exerted by the resulting force from the pipe walls. In steady flow, the mass of fluid entering the control volume at a given time, t, with velocity v1, is equal to the mass leaving after infinitesimal time dt, with velocity v2.
During this process, the momentum of the fluid within the control volume remains constant over the time interval dt. By applying the...

The application of the linear momentum equation can be used to analyze the forces needed to hold a 180-degree pipe bend in place with flowing water. In this case, water flows through the bend with a constant cross-sectional area of 0.01 square meters and a flow velocity of 15 meters per second. The pressure at the entrance is 0.2 Megapascals and the pressure at the exit is 0.16 Megapascals.
The goal is to determine the force components in the x and y directions to hold the pipe in place. Since...

The moment-of-momentum equation is a critical tool for analyzing the torque produced by the rotating blades of a wind turbine. This equation is derived by applying Newton's second law to a fluid particle, which states that the rate of change of linear momentum is equal to the external force acting on the particle.

In fluid mechanics, shear stresses arise from viscosity, which represents a fluid's internal resistance to deformation. For low-viscosity fluids, like water, these stresses are minimal, simplifying flow analysis by allowing the fluid to be treated as inviscid, or frictionless. In an inviscid fluid, shear stresses are absent, leaving only normal stresses, which act perpendicularly to fluid elements. Notably, pressure — defined as the negative of the normal stress — remains uniform across...