Orient the body boundary counterclockwise and write its tangent displacement as . The outward normal from the body has displacement-weighted components . Pressure therefore exerts the force components and , orFor steady irrotational incompressible flow at constant density, Bernoulli gives , with any constant far-field kinetic term absorbed into . Its constant contribution integrates to zero. The boundary is a streamline, so is constant there and is real. Thus , giving . This identity element remains valid at a stagnation point as both sides vanish. Substitution yields Blasius force theorem:
The Milne-Thomson circle theorem states that if is an analytic complex potential with no singularity on or inside , thenmakes a streamline while retaining the original exterior singularities and adding reflected singularities inside the circle. On the circle the two terms are conjugates, so the resulting streamfunction is zero there.
Put and . Applying the formula to the exterior planar potential doublet givesEquivalently, up to an irrelevant constant,The image planar potential doublet is inside the obstacle at ; the only physical fluid singularity is the prescribed one at .
The complex velocity obtained from part (b) isFor a nonzero planar potential doublet, . Its zeros therefore satisfyand henceThe denominators are nonzero because . For either sign,so . They are distinct because and is injective, its determinant being . Clearing the velocity denominators gives a quadratic with these two roots, so there are no further finite stagnation points. Thus both stagnation points lie on the obstacle boundary.
In the analytic continuation inside the circle, only the image location is singular; lies outside. Squaring the velocity givesThe last term has no residue, and the middle term has residuebecause and . The residue theorem and part (a) therefore yieldThus and . The force points towards the planar potential doublet and is independent of its orientation, since the factors and cancel in .
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