Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-fluids-and-waves-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/a/solution

An irrotational flow has . Hence a velocity potential exists locally, and globally on a simply connected domain, with . The exterior of a sphere in three dimensions has this property. Constant mass density reduces the continuity equation to , so
Thus the velocity potential is a harmonic function. For the Euler equations, use the vorticity cross-product identity
The last term vanishes. Since , the Euler momentum equation becomes
On each connected fluid region, a function with zero gradient is spatially constant. Therefore the Unsteady Bernoulli equation is
The freedom to add a function of time to the velocity potential changes but leaves the velocity field unchanged. On a multiply connected region, zero vorticity alone guarantees only local potentials; a global single-valued velocity potential additionally requires zero circulation around every closed path.

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