Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-viscous-flow-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/a/i/solution

Let have a boundary moving with velocity , and let be its outward unit normal vector. For a smooth scalar field , the Reynolds transport theorem is
In the last expression, extend smoothly into and use the divergence theorem. For a material volume, its boundary moves with the fluid velocity , so . Equivalently, the Reynolds transport theorem for a material volume reads
where is the material derivative.
For an arbitrary moving region, mass conservation includes the relative mass flow rate across its boundary:
Substitution of the Reynolds transport theorem and the divergence theorem gives
Since the region is arbitrary, a continuous integrand must vanish: if it had a positive or negative value at a point, a sufficiently small surrounding region would have an integral of the same sign. This gives the continuity equation. With constant positive mass density , it reduces to
Thus the flow is incompressible. For a material volume, the same argument starts directly from conservation of its total mass, with zero relative boundary flux.

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