Characteristics of Fluids
What is density?
the mass of a substance per unit volume
What is flow rate?
the volume or mass of a fluid (liquid or gas) that passes through a specific cross-sectional area per unit of time
What is the cubic meter?
the SI unit of volume representing a three-dimensional space measuring one meter long, one meter wide, and one meter deep
What is buoyancy?
the upward force exerted by a fluid (liquid or gas) that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object, enabling it to float or rise
What is incompressible?
materials, primarily liquids like water or oil, that do not change their volume or density significantly when subjected to pressure.
What is surface tension?
the elastic-like force acting on the surface of a liquid, causing it to behave like a stretched membrane and minimize its surface area.
What is viscosity?
a measure of a fluid’s internal resistance to flow
What is mass?
a fundamental, scalar measure of the amount of matter, or "stuff," in an object, representing its resistance to acceleration (inertia) and its gravitational attraction to other bodies
What is neutral buoyancy?
occurs when an object's average density equals the density of the fluid it is in, allowing it to remain suspended at a fixed depth without rising (positive buoyancy) or sinking (negative buoyancy).
Who is Blaise Pascal?
French child prodigy, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher
What is incompressibility?
What are Newtonian fluids?
a fluid whose viscosity remains constant regardless of the shear rate (flow speed) or force applied to it
What is water?
Water is a polar inorganic compound that is at the center of fluid dynamics because of its unique physical and chemical properties.
What is the center of buoyancy?
the geometric centroid of the volume of fluid displaced by a submerged or floating object.
What is mechanical advantage?
the factor by which a machine multiplies the input force (effort) to overcome a resistance force (load), making tasks easier to perform.
What is Pascal's Law?
Any pressure applied to a confined, incompressible fluid is transmitted equally and undiminished in all directions throughout the fluid.
What is the Reynolds number?
A dimensionless parameter in fluid mechanics that measures the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces within a fluid, used to predict whether flow is laminar or turbulent
What is Specific Gravity?
a dimensionless ratio comparing the density of a substance to the density of a reference substance,
What is the acceleration due to gravity?
the uniform acceleration (increase in speed) experienced by any object in free fall under the sole influence of Earth's gravitational pull.
What is Boyle's Law?
Boyle's Law is a fundamental principle in physics and chemistry that describes how the pressure of a gas tends to increase as the volume of the container decreases.
What is Bernoulli's Principle?
an increase in the speed of a fluid (liquid or gas) occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy
What is the boundary layer?
the thin,, viscous layer of fluid (liquid or gas) that forms immediately adjacent to a solid surface when there is relative motion.
What is Specific Weight?
the weight per unit volume of a material, representing the force exerted by gravity on that volume
What is Archimedes' Principle?
any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid (liquid or gas), is buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object
What is Bulk Modulus?
a material property measuring its resistance to uniform compression, representing the ratio of pressure change to the resulting fractional volume decrease.