Fluid Mechanics

Fluid Mechanics is the branch of physics treated with the mechanics of fluids like liquids, gases, and plasmas, and the forces on them. It can be classified into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion. It has applications in a broad range of disciplines, including mechanical, civil, chemical, and biomedical engineering, geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics, and biology.

It can be classified into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion. It is a part of continuum mechanics, a subject that models matter without using the knowledge that it is made out of atoms. That is, it models matter from a macroscopic viewpoint instead of from a microscopic. Fluid mechanics, especially fluid dynamics, is an active field of research, typically mathematically complex. Many problems are partly or wholly unsolved and are best addressed by numerical methods, typically using computers. A current method, called computational fluid dynamics (CFD), is applied to this approach. Particle image velocimetry, an experimental method for reflecting and analyzing fluid flow, also catches advantage of the highly visual nature of the fluid flow.