The steady radial equation first gives the base-pressure gradient
For the stated normal mode, put
Retaining terms linear in the disturbance in the Euler equations for an inviscid fluid gives
together with incompressible flow
The and terms are the linearized centrifugal and angular-momentum couplings of the swirling base flow.
At latitude , resolve the planetary angular velocity as
For velocity , the Coriolis acceleration is
The traditional approximation drops the terms involving the horizontal rotation component . The retained horizontal force is therefore
Its direct velocity-scale requirement is
For an incompressible flow, , so a sufficient condition is
together with the small aspect ratio that makes hydrostatic pressure the leading vertical momentum balance. The approximation consequently becomes delicate near the equator.
The beta plane is the local Taylor expansion
where
and is the planetary radius. It requires a local Cartesian region,
and . Away from the equator, treating the variation as a perturbation of an f-plane also requires ; near the equator one instead retains the linear term as the leading Coriolis parameter.
Let be the constant interior depth. Assume a homogeneous hydrostatic interior with depth-independent horizontal velocity, negligible friction, steady small-Rossby number flow, and no normal flow through the flat bottom. The vertical velocity varies from to , so incompressible flow gives
The leading horizontal momentum balance is geostrophic balance:
Taking its vertical curl on a beta plane gives
Combining the last two equations yields Sverdrup balance
The zonal velocity is then fixed, up to its value on one side boundary, by
Equivalently, substituting part a gives the depth-integrated form
A lateral boundary condition, normally supplied by matching to a boundary current, determines the remaining zonally uniform part of .
Differentiate horizontal momentum with respect to and vertical momentum with respect to . When the two equations are subtracted, the terms proportional to vanish by incompressible flow. The pressure derivatives also cancel, leaving
Differentiate this equation with respect to . Since continuity gives
one obtains
Apply and use the buoyancy equation . Multiplication by then gives
The thermodynamic order parameter is the conserved scalar composition difference of the binary fluid mixture. The momentum density is an additional conserved hydrodynamic mode; it is not a symmetry-breaking order parameter, but it must be retained because momentum relaxes only through spatial transport.
Composition conservation gives a continuity equation,
The current is the leading isotropic, dissipative constitutive law: it drives material down gradients of the chemical potential. For the Landau-Ginzburg theory
the functional derivative is
These statements give the advective Cahn--Hilliard equation.
Constant mass density and incompressible flow require . Momentum conservation gives the Navier-Stokes equation: material acceleration equals the sum of the Newtonian viscous force , the pressure force , and the Korteweg force . The pressure is the Lagrange multiplier enforcing incompressibility. Together these equations are Model H dynamics; isothermality removes the need for a separate energy equation.
Assume late-stage bicontinuous phase separation has one characteristic domain size and statistically self-similar morphology. The dynamical scaling of binary-fluid coarsening then estimates
The interface has surface tension . Its curvature pressure is of order , so its coarse-grained gradient, equivalently the transverse part of , scales as . Diffusive composition transport is neglected because hydrodynamic advection controls the late stage, and are treated as constants.
The pressure cannot simply be discarded: in an incompressible flow it cancels the longitudinal part of the other forces and contains both capillary and dynamic contributions. Applying the divergence-free projection to the momentum equation eliminates while retaining a solenoidal force with the same scaling. Geometry, projection, signs, and correlations are absorbed into dimensionless order-one coefficients. The result is
Write the density as a hydrostatic reference profile plus a small perturbation , and define buoyancy and buoyancy frequency by
The Boussinesq approximation to the Navier-Stokes equation, together with mass conservation, is
where is the material derivative, is kinematic viscosity, and is mass diffusivity. Linearizing about rest and eliminating pressure and buoyancy gives
For a plane wave proportional to , with , the viscous-diffusive dispersion relation is
In the inviscid limit this becomes
For weak diffusion the two oscillatory roots are
so a freely evolving Fourier mode decays.
A single plane wave is also an exact solution of the nonlinear equations. Every field depends only on its phase , while incompressible flow gives . Therefore annihilates both and , and all nonlinear advection terms vanish.
For a boundary-forced wave with real , nonzero or instead makes the bulk vertical wavenumber complex, attenuating the propagating beam. Because diffusion raises the spatial order of the equations, additional short vertical-wavenumber roots form viscous and scalar boundary layers; they allow a no-slip velocity condition and a scalar no-flux condition to accompany impermeability. These layers and bulk attenuation become essential near critical internal-wave reflection, where the inviscid reflected wavelength collapses.
The Boussinesq approximation replaces density by a common reference value in inertia, mass conservation, and pressure acceleration, while retaining small density differences in the gravitational buoyancy term. It gives incompressible flow and is appropriate here when
even though those small differences drive the room-scale motion. It would fail for order-one thermal density contrasts or strongly compressible ventilation.
The Batchelor entrainment hypothesis sets the mean inflow speed across a turbulent plume edge to times a representative axial plume speed, where is the entrainment coefficient. It closes integral plume balances by relating plume growth to its speed. Applied here, it produces an entraining axisymmetric warm plume above the floor source and a one-sided cold wall line plume below the vent. Treating both as turbulent top-hat plume models neglects source regions, detailed profiles, wall friction, interaction between the two plumes, and the finite thickness of the density interface; these are the principal modelling assumptions.
Let measure distance across the narrow gap and let be polar angle about the tube axis. In lubrication theory, radial velocity and radial pressure variation are negligible. Axisymmetric incompressible flow is obtained from
because . The tangential Stokes equation then separates:
and hence, after choosing an irrelevant pressure constant,
In the sphere frame, . The no-slip boundary condition gives on the sphere and on the membrane translating backward relative to it. The sphere-frame volume flux inherited from the narrow remote tube is , so
Under the asymptotic condition , the right-hand side is negligible at leading order. Solving the quadratic profile subject to the two wall values and zero leading-order integral gives
Changing the chosen positive tube direction reverses both signs but leaves the drag magnitude unchanged.
The pressure scale is , whereas the viscous shear scale is . After multiplication by comparable areas, pressure drag exceeds shear drag by , an instance of lubrication pressure dominates shear stress. Put . The axial pressure force is
As , the bracket tends to , and therefore
The resulting confined-sphere drag coefficient is
Thus it exceeds the free Stokes drag law coefficient by . The Stokes–Einstein relation then gives
The broad faces have curvature zero to leading order, so their stress boundary condition gives . The semicircular edges have curvature , giving . Incompressible flow gives ; uniform transverse normal stresses imply uniform transverse extension rates, and eliminating them from the Newtonian fluid stress tensor yields
At an edge, the kinematic boundary condition balances axial advection of , lateral strain, and capillary retraction. This gives
The equation expresses conservation of volume flux, while
states that the total axial tension is constant. Define
Then and , and substitution of gives
Subtracting these logarithmic-derivative equations gives
The remaining width equation is
Thus, for ,
while the continuous limit is .
If , then , , and mass conservation gives . Therefore a prescribed thinning ratio requires
For a sufficiently smooth vector field on a volume and its closed boundary , the divergence theorem states
with the unit normal directed outwards. Here
Hence the net volume flux through every closed surface in the liquid is zero. This verifies incompressible flow directly. It does not require the velocity to vanish pointwise on an arbitrary closed surface; inward and outward contributions can cancel.
For a twice continuously differentiable stream function, equality of mixed derivatives gives
This is the incompressible flow condition in two dimensions. A streamline is a curve whose tangent at each regular point is parallel to the instantaneous velocity field. Parameterize it by . The chain rule yields
Therefore the stream function is constant on each streamline. This proof includes arbitrary regular parametrizations; at a stagnation point the velocity vanishes and the usual tangent direction is not determined.
For a planar incompressible flow, a stream function satisfies , . A velocity potential satisfies , where the flow is irrotational; such a potential exists locally, and globally on a simply connected nonsingular region. The irrotational flow condition is . Where both exist, the Cauchy-Riemann equations make the complex potential analytic with .
For the logarithmic potential, write . Then
The outward volume flux per unit span across a circle is . Hence it is a line source of strength . The potential may use local logarithm branches; its velocity is single-valued away from the source.
By superposition, the full flow has
For positive and , the stagnation points are
They are real, one upstream of the source and one downstream of the sink. Away from the singularities, streamlines are level curves of
The zero level through the two stagnation points contains an upper and a lower separating curve, symmetric about the real axis and about . Together they bound a Rankine oval. Flow inside goes from source to sink; the external stream divides around this oval and tends to horizontal flow far away. This also specifies the sketch for every positive parameter ratio; the figure illustrates one ratio.
Figure 1.
Source–sink flow in a uniform stream
. Arrows follow the velocity; the bold separating streamline passes through both stagnation points. The illustrated ratio is . Details.
Orient the body boundary counterclockwise. Its outward normal vector satisfies , so the pressure force on the body has complex component
For steady incompressible flow and irrotational flow, Bernoulli's principle gives . The constant-pressure integral vanishes. Write . The impermeability condition makes velocity tangent to , implying . Thus along the boundary, and
This proves the Blasius force theorem, with force measured per unit length perpendicular to the flow plane.
For a circle of radius , Milne-Thomson's circle theorem replaces an incident analytic potential by , making the stream function constant on the circle. Its reflected singularities must lie inside the circle; here the physical source lies outside. With and , this yields, up to additive constants,
The interior image source and sink have equal and opposite strengths, so there is no extra net source inside the body. No independent vortex term is added. The potential may have logarithmic branches, but the velocity and pressure are single-valued.
Only and lie inside . The residues of are
Their sum is . The residue theorem and the preceding force formula therefore give
The force points towards the external source. Reflection symmetry across the horizontal axis independently checks the vanishing vertical component.
The velocity is because the flow is irrotational. Incompressible flow requires , hence the velocity potential satisfies Laplace's equation:
The exact kinematic boundary condition at the free surface is . With constant atmospheric pressure, the dynamic condition from Bernoulli's principle is , after choosing the time-dependent potential gauge. For small amplitudes, the products of perturbations are second order. Evaluating the remaining first-order terms at the undisturbed level gives
Substitution of into Laplace's equation gives . For , decay as selects . The two boundary conditions for yield
For a nonzero wave amplitude these are compatible precisely when
With the conventional and positive frequency, the dispersion relation is . The exponential decay is the infinite-depth boundary condition; retaining a growing exponential would violate it.
Milne-Thomson's circle theorem inserts an impermeable circular boundary into a two-dimensional irrotational incompressible flow. If is analytic in a neighborhood of the closed disc and its flow singularities lie outside, the new complex potential outside is
Reflection and coefficient conjugation make the second term analytic outside the circle, with its image singularities inside. On , , so the two terms sum to : the streamfunction is constant there. Thus no velocity crosses the circle. At infinity the image term tends to the constant , which has no effect on velocity, and the far-field flow is retained. This proves the construction, with an additive potential constant immaterial.
Put , . For the dipole the reflected potential is , giving
Its image pole is , inside the cylinder. The complex velocity is
Near , the second term is with , while is analytic there. The square of the pole term has no residue, nor does . The cross term has residue , so
Take the contour counterclockwise around the cylinder, as in the supplied Blasius force theorem. The residue theorem gives . Therefore
The force points toward the dipole. Its independence of dipole orientation follows from the product in the sole residue contribution.
The free surface is material, so applying the material derivative to gives the exact kinematic boundary condition
For an incompressible fluid with constant density, the Euler equations are
Since the flow is irrotational, and . Integrating the resulting gradient equation gives a function of time on the right of Bernoulli equation. Adding a time-dependent constant to removes that function, without changing velocity, and choosing the atmospheric-pressure reference gives
The pressure immediately above the surface is atmospheric; the liquid-side pressure includes the stated surface tension jump.
At first order in wave amplitude, the products and , the slope-squared correction to curvature, and displacement corrections in evaluating at are all higher order. Hence, on ,
For , a harmonic velocity potential decaying as and satisfying the first condition is
Indeed and . Substituting in the second condition yields the dispersion relation for a gravity-capillary wave:
Taking the positive-frequency branch, the phase velocity and group velocity are
Subtracting gives
Since ,
The threshold is also the wavenumber at the minimum phase speed of a gravity-capillary wave.
Figure 1. . The curves meet at dimensionless wavenumber one, where the phase speed is minimal. Details.
The vorticity of a fluid velocity field is . A vortex line is an integral curve tangent to that vector, not generally a particle path or streamline. Since , vorticity flux through successive cross-sections of a vortex tube is equal; a regular line cannot simply end inside the fluid. By Stokes's theorem, the tube strength is the circulation
For an inviscid barotropic fluid with conservative body force, Kelvin's circulation theorem conserves circulation around a material circuit. Under those assumptions vortex tubes move with the fluid. In three-dimensional incompressible ideal flow,
stretching a material tube raises its vorticity as its cross-section shrinks. In two-dimensional incompressible flow there is no such stretching, so scalar vorticity is materially conserved. Constant viscosity adds a diffusion term ; baroclinicity and boundaries can also generate vorticity.
An ideal line vortex has and zero ordinary vorticity for , with its circulation concentrated in the singular core. Circular trajectories therefore do not imply nonzero local vorticity everywhere. A finite physical core removes the velocity singularity.
For steady inviscid incompressible flow subject to a conservative body force, Bernoulli's theorem states that is constant along a streamline. The same constant applies across streamlines only with an additional condition, such as an irrotational connected flow with the same upstream head.
Neglect gravity and let the film's free-surface pressure be atmospheric. Its radial speed is then in the ideal model. Conservation of mass equates the incoming flux to , so
The latter value already warns that the thin-film approximation is poor near impact; the radial expression is most useful beyond that region. The incoming vertical momentum flux gives downward force when the outgoing flow is horizontal.
In the stipulated stagnant-rear-layer idealization, the excess rear pressure is the stagnation value . Its upward force is . Thus, with downward positive and ignoring the water's weight,
For a large plate, the radial-film volume is approximately
Its weight therefore changes the model to
Cancellation occurs near
The printed claim of negligible force for every radius above this scale does not follow from this model. Near the cancellation radius the force is small; for substantially larger radii the quadratic upward-pressure term dominates. The original PDF, not just its transcription, uses that inequality and wording. Moreover, the rear layer's mass and detailed gravity-dependent pressure field are unspecified. The calculation establishes a cancellation scale under the elementary stated pressure approximation, rather than a general large-radius zero-force theorem. A full free-surface flow model would be needed to extend it consistently.