Skip to Content Courses International ... Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences Fluid Mechanics Liquids and gases are very much a part of every day life, from the blood that pulses through our bodies, to the air we breath, to the atmosphere and oceans on the earth and elsewhere. We term liquids and gases, fluids, because unlike solids which have a defined rest shape, fluids take the shape of their container. The study of the physics of fluids, or more precisely continuous fluids, is known as Fluid Mechanics. This term can be further subdivided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest, and fluid dynamics, the study of fluids in motion. Air and water are often in mind when studying continuous fluids, but the fluid could equally be crude oil, sludge or tooth paste. Fluids can be heated, cooled, compressed, expanded, combusted and bathed in; they can be single or multiphased; and they can be laminar, turbulent or a combination thereof. Fluids can also be exploited to produce lift and drag, harnessed to extract energy, excited to enhance mixing, and controlled to help craft exotic crystal materials. Research in Fluid Mechanics is equally diverse and is used to understand problems ranging from swimming micro-organisms to environmental effects on global change. Techniques used in these studies range from mathematical studies of the equations which describe fluid motion, through numerics to solve them, to laboratory studies of fluids in motion, to low orbit satellite studies of events in the atmosphere and oceans. The topics studied by the Fluids Mechanics group at Swinburne fall broadly into three categories: geophysical, industrial and mathematical. The academic staff involved in each are listed below. All have vibrant research programs and are eager to discuss their work with prospective graduate students. | |
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