Fluid Dynamics

In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a fluid mechanics subdiscipline that describes fluid flow — liquids and gases. This has numerous subdisciplines, including aerodynamics (the study of moving air and other gases) and hydrodynamics (the study of moving liquids). Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modelling fission weapon detonation. Fluid dynamics offers a systematic structure—which underlies these practical disciplines—that embraces empirical and semi-empirical laws derived from flow measurement and used to solve practical problems. The solution to a fluid dynamics problem typically involves the calculation of various properties of the fluid, such as flow velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, as functions of space and time.