Fluid

A fluid is a material that flows under sustained shear stress and cannot maintain a static shear stress in its fluid state. Liquids and gases are the usual examples. A Newtonian fluid has deviatoric stress proportional to its rate-of-strain tensor, whereas more general fluid constitutive equations can be nonlinear or have memory. In a porous medium, the fluid occupies connected voids within a load-bearing solid framework. The important distinction is the response to a continuing tangential force: an ordinary elastic solid can settle into a fixed deformation, while an ordinary fluid continues to deform. A fluid can nevertheless be at rest when no unbalanced shear stress drives it. ^[ref]

For a worked example, place a Newtonian fluid between parallel plates separated by $h=1\mathrm{mm}$, keep the lower plate fixed and move the upper one at $U=0.10\mathrm{m}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. With no-slip boundary conditions, steady flow, no imposed pressure gradient and negligible edge effects, Couette flow has $u(y)=Uy/h$. For dynamic viscosity $\mu =0.001\mathrm{Pa}\mathrm{s}$, the shear stress magnitude isThe velocity gradient describes neighbouring layers sliding at different speeds. Doubling $U$ doubles the required shear stress; maintaining the same velocity keeps producing deformation, rather than fixing a final shape. This gives viscosity a concrete meaning: resistance to a rate of motion, not a prohibition on motion.