Fluid and heat transfer: Fluid mechanics (Q2756685)

This book is a part of a two-volume text on fluid and heat transfer, cf. also [\textit{G. P. Merker} and \textit{C. Eiglmeier}, Fluid- und Wärmeübertragung. Teubner, Stuttgart (1999)], and covers the material which the authors presented in their lectures on fluid mechanics. It is mainly addressed to undergraduate students of engineering.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEAfter a short overview on the subject, the main results on hydrostatics are recapitulated in the introduction (9 pp.). Chapter 2 (43 pp.) deals with stationary and nonstationary inviscid compressible and incompressible fluid flows in one dimension. Then follows chapter 3 (35 pp.) on inviscid fluid flows in two or three dimensions, and on plane potential flows. The explanation of the concept of continuum (pp. 53 ff.) and the comparison between microscopic and macroscopic points of view seems to be a bit artificial and overloaded.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEIn chapter 4 (44 pp.) simple laminar as well as turbulent viscous fluid flows are described, whereas chapter 5 (40 pp.) is devoted to viscous fluid flows in three dimensions, boundary layers, and turbulence. However, the description of laminar and turbulent flow does not seem to be quite instructive. So, on p. 117 the authors say that totally laminar flow would not be time-dependent in opposite to turbulent flow (p. 118) that would be nonstationary, chaotic, and three-dimensional (see p. 158). Aspects of hydrodynamic stability remain undiscussed.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEAlthough it is nice to give some introduction to computational aspects right in the first course, chapter 6 (9 pp.) on the numerical solution does not help so much: the explanation of the terms ``convergent'' and ``consistent'' numerical methods (p. 173) is rather misleading, and the conservation form of numerical scheme is required for both the compressible as well as incompressible fluid flows without making a difference. Then the finite element method is described in a few lines to be similar to the finite volume technique, but would lead to more complex matrices than in finite difference or finite volume methods (p. 180), which is also misleading. The time discretization is not mentioned but in previous chapters time-dependent problems were discussed. What the reader is also missing, is some information about available software. The book ends with two appendices, a list of references (that is rather short with 32 entries), and with an index.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe authors prefer to derive the basic equations of fluid dynamics from differential relationships rather than from balance equations. Many equations are emphasized in the text, and so the novice in this field might be frightened of so many important information. However, what helps is appendix B that collects important and useful formulae again. Each chapter (except chapter 6) is supplied with some exercises, the solution of which can be found in appendix A. For reading the book, some basic knowledge of thermodynamics is necessary, as the reader needs to be familiar with such notions as adiabatic, isentropic etc. Although the book contains many tables and illustrations, the reader is maybe missing some more instructive pictures of fluid motion. Moreover, some hints for further reading, including references to more advanced literature, are also missing. For a first-course text, also some more remarks on the historical developments could be helpful to the students for their motivation. The tensorial notation (using \(x\), \(y\), \(z\) as well as 1, 2, 3 as indices) might be confusing and takes attention away from what is important (see pp. 135 ff.). Also, Einstein's sum convention is sometimes used in a misleading way (e.g. in Navier-Stokes equations on pp. 137, 203). Several misprints appear when names come into play (e.g. ``karthesische'' instead of ``kartesische'' on p. 59, ``Braunsche Molekularbewegung'' instead of ``Brownsche Molekularbewegung'' on p. 53).