Through the centuries, the intricacies of fluid mechanics — the study of the laws of motion and fluids in motion — have occupied many of history's greatest minds. In this pioneering account, a distinguished aeronautical scientist presents a history of fluid mechanics focusing on the achievements of the pioneering scientists and thinkers whose inspirations and experiments lay behind the evolution of such disparate devices as irrigation lifts, ocean liners, windmills, fireworks and spacecraft.
The author first presents the basics of fluid mechanics, then explores the advances made through the work of such gifted thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, da Vinci, Galileo, Pascal, Newton, Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, Ernst Mach and other scientists of the 20th century. Especially important for its illuminating comparison of the development of fluid mechanics in the former Soviet Union with that in the West, the book concludes with studies of transsonic compressibility and aerodynamics, supersonic fluid mechanics, hypersonic gas dynamics and the universal matter-energy continuity.
Professor G. A. Tokaty has headed the prestigious Aeronautical Research Laboratory at the Zhukovsky Academy of Aeronautics in Moscow, and has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Emeritus Professor of Aeronautics and Space Technology, The City University, London.
Author(s): G. A. Tokaty
Edition: Revised ed.
Publisher: Dover Publications
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 272
Tags: Epistemology
Preface
Basic Definitions
Fluids and Life
Water and Air
The First Uses of Fluids
Mythology and Fluids
Plato and Fluids
Aristotle and the Science of Fluids
The Birth of Fluidstatics
Hero of Alexandria
Through the Dark Ages of the Renaissance
General Remarks about Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's Original Works on Fluids
Leonardo's Fluidmechanics
Simon Stevin
Galileo Galilei
Evangelista Torricelli and Otto von Guericke
Blaise Pascal
Sir Isaac Newton
Daniel Bernoulli
Leonhard Euler
Louis de Lagrange
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Chevalier de Borda and Others
Chezy, Du Buat, Coulon, Hagen, Poiseuille and Girard
Claude Louis M. H. Navier
The Birth of Experimental Fluidmechanics
Benjamin Robins and Leonhard Euler
Lazare Carnot, Pierre Simon de Laplace and others
Augustin Louis Cauchy and Others
Hermann von Helmholtz and Others
Osborne Reynolds
Mikhail Lomonossov and Others
The Russian School of Scientific Thought
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky
Frederick Lanchester and Others
The Prandtl-Lanchester Lifting Line Theory
Flettner's Rudders
Flettner's Rotorship
Flettner's Rotor Windmill
Autorotating Bodies
Riabouchinsky, Mallock, Benard, von Karman
William Froude and Others
Turbulent Boundary Layer and Flow Separation
Methods of Delaying Flow Separation
Airscrews
The Inner Structure of Fluids
The Velocity of Sound
Ernst Mach and Others
The Chaplygin-Khristianovich Method
The Drag Wall
Transsonic Compressibility Effects on Lift
Further Notes on Transsonic Aerodynamics
Further Notes on Supersonic Fluidmechanics: Superfluidity
Hypersonic Gasdynamics
The Universal Matter-Energy Continuity
Index
