Introduction

This chapter introduces a variety of basic ideas encountered in analysis of internal flow problems. These concepts are not only useful in their own right but they also underpin material which appears later in the book.

The chapter starts with a discussion of conditions under which a given flow can be regarded as incompressible. If these conditions are met, the thermodynamics have no effect on the dynamics and significant simplifications occur in the description of the motion.

The nature and magnitude of upstream influence, i.e. the upstream effect of a downstream component in a fluid system, is next examined. A simple analysis is developed to determine the spatial extent of such influence and hence the conditions under which components in an internal flow system are strongly coupled.

Many flows of interest cannot be regarded as incompressible so that effects associated with compressibility must be addressed. We therefore introduce several compressible flow phenomena including one-dimensional channel flow, mass flow restriction (“choking”) at a geometric throat, and shock waves. The last of these topics is developed first from a control volume perspective and then through a more detailed analysis of the internal shock structure to show how entropy creation occurs within the control volume.

The integral forms of the equations of motion, utilized in a control volume formulation, provide a powerful tool for obtaining an overall description of many internal flow configurations. A number of situations are analyzed to show their application. These examples also serve as modules for building descriptions of more complex devices.