14 Fundamentals
infinitesimal element its value is thus −pn dS—the minus sign because the pressure
force acts toward the area dS and thus is opposite to the unit normal.
The viscous force in general will have both normal and tangential components. For
now, simply write it as
n
dS acting on a small portion of the surface, where
n
is
called the stress vector. It is the force per unit area acting on the surface dS. The n
superscript reminds us that the stress vector is applied to a surface with normal pointing
in the n direction.
The gravity force per unit volume is written as g dV , where the magnitude of g is 9.80
or 32.17, depending on whether the units used are SI or British. The net force is then
S
−pn +
n
dS +
V
g dV
Equating this to the net change in momentum gives
V
Dv
Dt
dV =
S
−pn +
n
dS +
V
g dV (1.5.2)
Use of the divergence theorem allows us to write
S
−pn dS =
V
−p dV (1.5.3)
This reduces equation (1.5.2) to
V
Dv
Dt
dV =
V
−p +gdV +
S
n
dS (1.5.4)
At this point a similar simplification for the viscous term is not possible. This term is
investigated further in the next section.
1.6 Stress
Stress is defined as a force applied to an area divided by that area. Thus, two directions
are associated with stress: the direction of the force and the direction (orientation) of the
area. Therefore, stress has a more complicated mathematical structure than does either
a scalar or a vector. To put this into its simplest form, three special stress vectors will
be introduced that act on mutually orthogonal surfaces whose faces are orientated with
normals along our coordinate axes.
When a material is treated as a continuum, a force must be applied as a quantity
distributed over an area. (In analysis, a concentrated force or load can sometimes be a
convenient idealization. In a real material, any concentrated force would provide very
large changes—in fact, infinite changes—both in deformation and in the material.) The
previously introduced stress vector
n
, for example, is defined as
n
= lim
S→0
F
S
(1.6.1)
where S is the magnitude of the infinitesimal area. In the limit as S approaches zero
the direction of the normal to S is held fixed.
It appears that at a given point in the fluid there can be an infinity of different
stress vectors, corresponding to the infinitely many orientations of n that are possible.
To bring order out of such confusion, we consider three very special orientations of n
and then show that all other orientations of n produce stress vectors that are simply
related to the first three.