Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stream Function
Now we discuss an application of the incompressible continuity equation to
introduce an important function in fluid mechanics, widely used for flow
visualization and analytical techniques.
The concept of the stream function was introduced as an attempt to solve the
incompressible fluid flow problems. In old times when computers were not available,
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers were non-existent. Thus the attempt was to
define the transformations, which satisfy certain flow equations. One such way was
to define a function (x,y) which satisfied the two dimensional mass-conversion law:
u v
0
x y
Suppose, u y and v
x
u 2 v 2
we then get and
x xy y yx
2 2
Since (x,y) is a continuous function of x and y,
xy yx
u dv
Therefore, we see that the above definition of function satisfies x dy 0
Physical Interpretation
Now we have discovered the existence of a function (x,y), called the stream function,
which satisfies the continuity equation for incompressible fluid flows. If exists, we
know that the flow must be incompressible. But what can we do with such a function? It
turns out that this function has some handy properties which we may be able to use for
learning more about fluid flows. First of all, the name stream function is chosen
because this function stays constant along a particular streamline in a flow. Recall
the definition
of streamlines, which satisfied:
V dr 0
This expression means dr , which is a vector parallel to the tangent vector
of a
streamline, is in the same direction (or, parallel) as the velocity vector, V .
dr
(x,y) V
Ghosh - 550 Page 2 9/18/2017
[Note: V dr V dr sin( ) , = angle in between the vectors.
V dr 0 = 0, i.e., V dr ]
In Cartesian coordinates, V u i v j
and dr dx i dy j
V dr (u dy x dx)k 0
d d
u dy v dx dy dx
dy dx
d d
dx dy d (by chain rule)
dx dy
d 0 constant
This nice property gives us an opportunity to visualize the streamlines readily. If we can
determine a (x,y) in the flow, we can sketch the streamlines by setting a different
constant each time for and plotting the as shown below.
1 D
C
A B
2
3 D
C
A B
4
evaluate the velocity vector to determine the flow direction)
This means that if we can somehow determine (x,y) in a 2-D, incompressible flow, we
can:
Examples Continue