Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 344 2 a Solution 2026-09-28
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 theorythe functional derivative isThese 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 345 2 a Solution 2026-09-28
Write the density as a hydrostatic reference profile plus a small perturbation , and define buoyancy and buoyancy frequency byThe Boussinesq approximation to the Navier-Stokes equation, together with mass conservation, iswhere is the material derivative, is kinematic viscosity, and is mass diffusivity. Linearizing about rest and eliminating pressure and buoyancy givesFor a plane wave proportional to , with , the viscous-diffusive dispersion relation isIn the inviscid limit this becomesFor weak diffusion the two oscillatory roots areso 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 333 1 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The horizontal velocities and point east and north, is the displacement of the free surface from its mean level, is the undisturbed depth, is gravitational acceleration, and is the constant Coriolis parameter on an f-plane. The three linearized shallow water equations are horizontal momentum balance and mass conservation:They follow from the rotating Navier-Stokes equation by assuming an inviscid homogeneous layer, hydrostatic pressure, horizontal scales much larger than , depth-independent horizontal velocity, a flat impermeable bottom, constant , and small surface displacement and velocity so that nonlinear products are neglected.
In a steady state, geostrophic balance givesThe relative vorticity is . Expanding the shallow-water potential vorticity to first order givesThus one convenient normalization of its disturbance isTaking the curl of momentum and using continuity shows .
Past exam of the physics B course of the University of Cambridge 2015 Paper 1 Section C 13 Solution 2026-10-20
For a Newtonian fluid with velocity , is the component of traction on a plane whose normal points along . The opposite face has the opposite traction. The coefficient is dynamic viscosity, with units . Faster layers transfer positive momentum toward slower neighbours; the internal shear stress resists relative sliding.
Shear-traction convention, Couette-Poiseuille profiles, and oscillatory viscous penetration
. Details. Take a thin fluid element with horizontal area and thickness . The difference between its upper and lower viscous tractions is . The pressure gradient supplies . Incompressibility is satisfied because has no dependence, and the convective acceleration vanishes: . Equating net force to mass times acceleration therefore gives the relevant component of the Navier-Stokes equation:For steady flow, integrate twice and impose the no-slip boundary condition at each plate, and . The Couette-Poiseuille flow profile isThe linear term is Couette flow and the parabolic term is plane Poiseuille flow. A negative drives flow in . Integrating the profile across the gap gives the volumetric flow per unit width,It has units ; multiplying by the plate width gives the actual volume per time.
With zero pressure gradient, substituting gives . Select the root that decays into fluid occupying :The other sign applies to decay in the opposite half-space. With a real wall velocity amplitude , the established periodic solution of Stokes' second problem isThe oscillation's amplitude decays exponentially and its phase lags with distance from the plate. This is diffusion of tangential momentum, not a freely propagating undamped elastic wave. Initial transients must have decayed before this purely periodic expression applies.
The fluid-displacement amplitude and the wall-displacement amplitude have the same ratio as their velocity amplitudes, since both are divided by the common . Thus for the specified amplitudes,Using the standard approximate water density , explicitly an approximation rather than another value printed on the paper, gives and from either face of a sufficiently large plate. The viscous penetration depth varies as if a more precise water density is used. The ideal parallel-flow solution ignores finite plate edges and tank walls.
A Newtonian fluid exerts viscous shear stress proportional to the rate of strain. For an incompressible fluid of constant dynamic viscosity ,The local momentum balance is the Navier-Stokes equation:The left side is density times material acceleration. A steady velocity field can still have convective acceleration when a moving parcel changes speed or direction; setting does not eliminate it.
The Reynolds number compares inertia with viscous effects. At low Reynolds number, the fluid's own inertia can often be neglected, giving Stokes flow. This does not say that every immersed body has zero acceleration: its mass and the net pressure, viscous and body forces still enter its own equation of motion.
For a small rigid sphere moving through a slowly varying viscous background, Stokes drag is . In still fluid, a simple settling model includes weight, buoyancy and drag:Ignoring fluid added mass and unsteady history forces, this gives relaxation time and terminal velocityAt the terminal velocity the net force and acceleration vanish, while viscous drag and gravity remain individually nonzero. The dissipated power is supplied by the loss of gravitational potential energy relative to buoyant support. The creeping-flow and quasisteady-drag assumptions must be checked before applying this expression at large speed or immediately after a rapid start.
Past exam of the physics B course of the University of Cambridge 2017 Paper 2 Section B B9 Solution 2026-10-18
Following the moving fluid. The Eulerian velocity field assigns a velocity to each position. A fluid particle satisfies , so the chain rule gives the material derivative, also called the convective derivative,Even in steady flow a particle can accelerate because it moves between regions with different velocity. For example, flow around a curved obstacle changes direction despite . Mass conservation isFor a constant-density incompressible fluid, .
Euler equations for an inviscid fluid and Bernoulli's equation. Neglect viscosity and take the body force per unit mass to be . Newton's second law for a fluid element givesFor steady flow, dot with displacement along a streamline. The tangential component of is the derivative of along that line. For constant density, integration givesIn uniform gravity, . Thus pressure, kinetic energy per unit mass and gravitational potential energy per unit mass exchange along a streamline. For a barotropic compressible fluid, replace by . Different streamlines need not have the same Bernoulli constant.
Vorticity and potential flow. Vorticity is . A small fluid element rotates locally with angular velocity after its deformational part is separated. The vector identitygives for steady constant-density inviscid flow. Thus an irrotational region has one common Bernoulli constant on each connected region. In a simply connected irrotational domain, introduce a velocity potential . Incompressibility then gives Laplace's equation, . For unsteady irrotational flow,An impermeable stationary wall fixes , but ideal potential flow does not enforce no slip. In a multiply connected domain, irrotational flow may still have nonzero circulation around an excluded vortex core, so a globally single-valued potential requires care.
For example, uniform two-dimensional flow past a circular cylinder has outside . Its normal velocity vanishes at the cylinder, and its surface tangential velocity is . Bernoulli's equation predicts a symmetric pressure distribution and zero drag. This is D'Alembert's paradox: the assumptions omit the viscous boundary layers, separation and wake responsible for real drag.
For an incompressible fluid of constant kinematic viscosity , the curl of the motion equation givesThe first term stretches and tilts vortex lines; the second diffuses vorticity. In two-dimensional incompressible inviscid flow the stretching term is absent and vorticity is carried with the fluid. In a three-dimensional inviscid flow it can be amplified by stretching. Density gradients not parallel to pressure gradients provide an additional source in a general compressible fluid.
Viscous flow. A Newtonian fluid's shear stress is proportional to rate of strain. For constant viscosity and incompressibility the Navier-Stokes equation iswith dynamic viscosity and kinematic viscosity . At an ordinary solid wall, the no-slip boundary condition sets fluid velocity equal to the wall velocity. Viscosity transfers momentum between neighbouring layers and converts mechanical energy into heat; unlike the pressure force, its shear contribution depends on velocity gradients.
For plane Couette flow between plates , with the upper plate moving at , the steady solution is , with shear stress . For pressure-driven flow through a pipe of radius , a constant pressure gradient gives the parabolic Poiseuille profileThe Reynolds number compares convective inertia with viscous force. Small Reynolds number often permits the Stokes-flow approximation; large Reynolds number can produce thin boundary layers and, under suitable conditions, turbulence. It does not justify neglecting the wall conditions. Bernoulli's inviscid constant is generally not conserved along a viscous streamline, and pipe flow instead shows a pressure loss corresponding to dissipation.
TODO: user-deferred biology. The bacterial-motion application is deferred. The following covers the Reynolds number and its general fluid-mechanical implications.
The Reynolds numbercompares advective inertia with viscous force on a specified length scale and velocity scale . Here is fluid mass density, is dynamic viscosity and is kinematic viscosity. In the Navier-Stokes equation, advective acceleration scales as , while the viscous term per unit mass scales as ; their ratio is Reynolds number.
When and unsteady fluid inertia is also negligible, the incompressible flow equations reduce to Stokes flow:Thus pressure, applied body forces and viscous stresses balance at each instant. For a translating rigid sphere, drag is proportional to velocity, , rather than the inertial scale . Given the same instantaneous geometry, reversing the imposed boundary velocities reverses the Stokes flow; there is no fluid-inertial coasting in this approximation. This statement concerns the fluid limit and does not discard a separately significant particle inertia.
A low steady Reynolds number alone does not justify dropping rapid unsteady acceleration. For forcing frequency , the additional dimensionless ratio is . No organism-specific sizes, velocities or propulsion mechanism are assumed here.
Let increase down the pipe, be its radius and the distance from its axis. For steady, fully developed laminar flow of a Newtonian fluid, the axial Navier-Stokes equations reduce toWrite . Integrating twice, regularity at excludes a logarithmic term, and the no-slip boundary condition gives the Hagen-Poiseuille flow profileThe volumetric flow rate follows by integrating over the circular cross-section:For the intended gravity-driven case with no imposed axial pressure gradient, . Substitution givesandThe corresponding mean speed is about and the diameter-based Reynolds number is , consistent with laminar flow. The original PDF does not specify inlet and outlet pressures. If they impose an additional pressure gradient, the general result with above applies; gravity alone does not determine that extra contribution.
Past exam of the theoretical mechanics course of the University of Oxford 2011 A 1 a iii Solution 2026-10-31
Insert the traction formula into the material-volume balance and apply the divergence theorem to each row of the stress tensor:The volume is arbitrary, so continuity of the fields gives the local Cauchy momentum equationFor an incompressible Newtonian fluid, the constitutive law isHere the pressure enforces incompressibility, and the viscous stress is twice the viscosity times the symmetric rate-of-strain tensor. With constant ,Using proves the stated Navier-Stokes equations.
Past exam of the topics in fluid mechanics course of the University of Oxford 2023 1 a ii Solution 2026-10-25
Define the aspect ratio and the thickness-based Reynolds number byUse the nondimensionalizationThe small transverse velocity scale follows from incompressibility. Dropping stars, the base fields become and . Before subtracting the base state, the dimensionless Navier-Stokes equation readsFor example, division of the downslope momentum equation by makes the inertial coefficient and the pressure gradient coefficient . The transverse equation has been divided instead by after using its smaller velocity scale; this gives the displayed coefficient.
Now substitute , , . Since , , and the base fields have no or dependence, subtraction givesThese are nonlinear equations for the deviations; small amplitude has not been assumed. The later asymptotic expansion takes as , or more generally requires the retained inertial correction to remain small.
Past exam of the topics in fluid mechanics course of the University of Oxford 2023 1 a i Solution 2026-10-25
Take positive away from the wall into the liquid, and write for atmospheric pressure. For a constant-mass density Newtonian fluid, the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation and continuity equation areThe stationary wall imposes the no-slip boundary condition and no-penetration boundary condition, at . For a flat free surface with negligible air shear stress, the stress boundary condition is , at ; the kinematic boundary condition is there.
For steady flow independent of , these equations give , and . Two integrations and the boundary conditions give the uniform gravity-driven Newtonian film:Its surface velocity is , while its mean velocity is .
Past exam of the topics in fluid mechanics course of the University of Oxford 2023 3 a i Solution 2026-10-25
For a constant-mass density incompressible flow with no imposed body force, the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation isA conservative body force, if retained, may be incorporated into a modified pressure. Using scales and givesHere is the molecular kinematic viscosity. At high Reynolds number, inertia and the pressure gradient dominate on the outer length scale, while molecular viscous diffusion is small there. Thin boundary layers, narrow shear flows and fine turbulent scales can still have sufficiently large velocity gradients for viscous effects to matter. High Reynolds number permits instability and turbulence, but does not alone prove that every flow is turbulent. Molecular viscous dissipation remains essential at the small end of the turbulent cascade.
For an isotropic Newtonian fluid in incompressible flow, the constitutive equation isHere is pressure, is the Kronecker delta, is the constant dynamic viscosity, and is the strain-rate tensor. The more general compressible constitutive equation can include a term proportional to ; that term vanishes here.
Differentiate the Cauchy stress tensor, retaining the constant dynamic viscosity outside the derivatives:The last equality uses incompressibility. Substitution into the Cauchy momentum equation gives the Navier-Stokes equationThe pressure gradient and the Laplacian of the velocity field therefore give the two contact force densities in this model.
For the unidirectional flow , incompressibility gives . Hence , and the convective acceleration vanishes. The transverse components of the Navier-Stokes equation give , while the axial component givesA steady-flow assumption is implicit in the question. Neither unidirectional flow nor a time-independent pressure gradient alone eliminates : a decaying transient can be superposed on the final pipe profile. The native PDF does not explicitly say steady flow in this part. For the intended steady flow, , and thereforeTaking the pipe walls to be stationary, the no-slip boundary condition isThe no-penetration boundary condition is already satisfied by the assumed velocity field. This is the Poisson equation defining rectangular duct flow.
For the proposed velocity field, , so incompressibility holds. Its convective acceleration isand both components have zero Laplacian. The Navier-Stokes equation therefore requires and . Hencewhere is an arbitrary constant reference pressure. The same pressure gradient balances the same convective acceleration in the Euler equations for an inviscid fluid. Since the viscous terms vanish identically, this is an exact solution for every positive Reynolds number, as well as for the inviscid limit.
At , the normal velocity is zero, and the prescribed dimensionless tangential traction isThis stagnation point flow therefore has zero surface shear stress, although its strain-rate tensor and its viscous normal stresses are nonzero.
In a thin boundary layer, take streamwise velocity and distance to be order one, set , and use incompressibility to set . The streamwise convective acceleration is order one, whereas its dominant viscous contribution after division by the Reynolds number is . Their dominant balance selectsWith this choice, the exact rescaled Navier-Stokes equations areThus the leading pressure is independent of . Matching it to the outer solution from part (a), evaluated near , gives , hence . The leading boundary-layer equation is thereforeThe exact surface shear stress condition rescales to . Since for all , its tangential derivative also vanishes there. The leading surface boundary conditions areMatching to the outer solution requiresThe second matching condition specifies the leading growth of , allowing a constant displacement correction. Requiring would impose an extra condition not supplied by the leading outer solution. This is the stress-driven stagnation-point boundary layer.
The flat plate moves tangentially and the curved plate is stationary. The no-slip boundary condition and no-penetration boundary condition giveAt the curved plate, impermeability can also be written ; together with zero tangential velocity, this gives both components zero. The native PDF writes in the scaled wall conditions although the normal component is defined as . We use consistently.
The parabolic lubrication gap changes by order when is order . Its natural horizontal scale is thereforeThe proposed normal velocity scale then makes the two terms of the continuity equation comparable. Balancing the horizontal pressure gradient against the transverse viscous term in the Navier-Stokes equation requires , soHere pressure is measured from a common reference value, which is chosen at the outer fluid in part (b).
For clarity, define the dimensionless material derivativeSubstitution of all the scalings gives the exact dimensionless equationsFor example, the factor in the last left side is obtained by dividing the vertical acceleration scale by the vertical pressure gradient scale .
Taking and leaves the lubrication approximationThe scaled gap and boundary conditions areThe Reynolds number itself need not be small: it is that measures inertia relative to transverse viscous resistance in this thin geometry.
Planar Poiseuille flow with equal wall slip 2026-10-14
Now both plates at and are stationary and both obey the Navier slip boundary condition with the same slip length . Drive steady flow of a Newtonian fluid in incompressible flow by the constant pressure gradient , with constant dynamic viscosity and no other streamwise body force. The planar Poiseuille flow profile and its volumetric flow rate per unit width areThe full volumetric flow rate for channel width is when side-wall effects are negligible. Thus has units , while has units . Denote the value at by .
The two wall checks expose the normal signs:Both Navier slip boundary conditions therefore hold exactly. The two walls exert backward tangential tractions of magnitude on the fluid. Increasing at fixed adds a uniform velocity offset, leaving the velocity gradient and wall shear stress unchanged. This differs from Couette flow with a slipping lower wall, where upper-wall velocity is fixed and shear stress decreases.
For , , and , the wall velocity is , the centre velocity is , and . The enhancement is . Equivalently, a prescribed volumetric flow rate needs only of the original pressure gradient. This makes slip length useful for estimating pumping requirements in small channels.
Equal slip at both channel walls increases pressure-driven flow
. Both walls are stationary and obey the Navier slip boundary condition. Left: normalized planar Poiseuille flow profiles at fixed pressure gradient , gap and dynamic viscosity for , and . Arrows show inward unit normals in opposite directions at the two walls. Right: volumetric flow rate per unit width increases by the factor at fixed . Details.At fixed , and , recovers ordinary planar Poiseuille flow. As , the velocity and grow without bound in this model, although the varying part of the profile stays the same. At exactly zero tangential wall traction, no steady solution can balance this nonzero pressure gradient: conflicts with . Unlimited enhancement is consequently not a prediction for a real channel; finite wall friction, finite driving capacity and the validity of the assumed steady flow must be assessed. At fixed finite instead, and the profile approaches uniform velocity .
A short derivation integrates the reduced Navier-Stokes equation twice. Equal slip lengths and the opposite inward unit normals give . Its integral over the gap supplies the enhancement factor .
Pressure compatibility at a no-slip wall 2026-10-06
For a smooth incompressible Navier-Stokes equation trajectory with zero velocity at a fixed flat wall, the normal momentum equation determines the normal pressure gradient. In a perturbation model with buoyancy term , it gives . An extra homogeneous pressure Neumann boundary condition is valid only when the right side vanishes; it does not follow from the no-slip boundary condition.
Taking the divergence of the constant-density Navier-Stokes equation and using incompressibility gives the displayed elliptic Poisson equation for pressure. Its Green function is nonlocal. For an isolated eddy, the far pressure has a quadrupolar contribution proportional to , obtained by differentiating the kernel twice. Boundary conditions can contribute additional pressure fields.

