Orient the body boundary counterclockwise. Its outward normal vector satisfies , so the pressure force on the body has complex componentFor 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, andThis 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 areTheir sum is . The residue theorem and the preceding force formula therefore giveThe force points towards the external source. Reflection symmetry across the horizontal axis independently checks the vanishing vertical component.
Articles by others on the same topic
There are currently no matching articles.