Advanced Fluid Mechanics 1: Fundamentals
Learn the fundamental principles underlying fluid dynamics; including the kinematics of deformation, hydrostatics & buoyancy, inviscid flow and the application of Bernoulli’s theorems, as well as applications of control volume analysis for more complex problems of engineering interest.
Course Information
Certificate Track
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About this Course
This course covers the fundamentals of advanced fluid mechanics: including its connections to continuum mechanics more broadly, hydrostatics, buoyancy and rigid body accelerations, inviscid flow, and the application of Bernoulli’s theorems, as well as applications of control volume analysis for more complex fluid flow problems of engineering interest. This course features lecture and demo videos, lecture concept checks, practice problems, and extensive problem sets.
This course is the first of a three-course sequence in incompressible fluid mechanics: Advanced Fluid Mechanics: Fundamentals, Advanced Fluid Mechanics: The Navier-Stokes Equations for Viscous Flows, and Advanced Fluid Mechanics: Potential Flows, Lift, Circulation & Boundary Layers. The series is based on material in MIT’s class 2.25 Advanced Fluid Mechanics, one of the most popular first-year graduate classes in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department. This series is designed to help people gain the ability to apply the governing equations, the principles of dimensional analysis and scaling theory to develop physically-based, approximate models of complex fluid physics phenomena. People who complete these three consecutive courses will be able to apply their knowledge to analyze and break down complex problems they may encounter in industrial and academic research settings.
The material is of relevance to engineers and scientists across a wide range of mechanical chemical and process industries who must understand, analyze and optimize flow processes and fluids handling problems. Applications are drawn from hydraulics, aero & hydrodynamics as well as the chemical process industries.
What you'll learn
- Continuum mechanics
- Hydrostatics
- Buoyancy and rigid body accelerations
- Inviscid flow
- Application of Bernoulli’s theorems
- Applications of control volume analysis for more complex fluid flow problems of engineering interest
Prerequisites
Comfort with undergraduate-level fluid mechanics, multivariable calculus and undergraduate differential equations: elementary vector and tensor manipulation, Fourier transforms, solving second order linear ODEs and PDEs. Students without this background will find there is a steep learning curve and may have to put in more than the estimated time effort.
Meet your instructors
John Liu
Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering
John Liu is the Principal Investigator of the MIT Learning Engineering and Practice (LEAP) Group, which applies design and systems principles to solving challenges in learning and develops learning experiences to better meet the increasing demand for STEM skills in tomorrow’s workforce. He is a Lecturer in MIT's Mechanical Engineering department and Scientist of the MITx Digital Learning Laboratory. As the former Director of the Principles of Manufacturing MicroMasters program, he facilitated a team of faculty and instructors to develop content and innovate manufacturing education at MIT using digital technology.
His work includes engineering education, mixed reality and haptic experiences, workforce solutions to address the nation-wide manufacturing skills gap, open-ended assessments for scalable education settings, and instructional design theory for massively open online courses. He earned his B.S. in Applied Physics from Caltech and S.M. and Ph.D. and S.M. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, under an MIT-SUTD fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
