The Physics of Fluids

3 cr · Undergraduate

The course covers basic fluid dynamics based on the Euler equations. Topics include conservation laws; linear sound waves; instabilities; the generation of sound waves; linear and non-linear description of water waves including the Korteweg-de Vries equation, soliton solutions, and shock waves; elasticity and the stress tensor; Navier-Stokes equations and their solutions; the Hagen-Poiseuille law; Stokes' law and aerodynamics; attenuation of acoustic waves; non-linear acoustics; and the basic concepts of the description of turbulence including Kolmogorov's theory, correlation functions, and spectral tensors.