Preface
THIS text has evolved from a need for a single volume that embraces a very wide range of topics in fluid mechanics. The material consists of two parts— four chapters on macroscopic or relatively large-scale phenomena, followed by ten chapters on microscopic or relatively small-scale phenomena. Throughout, I have tried to keep in mind topics of industrial importance to the chemical engineer. The scheme is summarized in the following list of chapters.
Part I—Macroscopic Fluid Mechanics
1. Introduction to Fluid Mechanics
2. Mass, Energy, and Momentum Balances
4. Flow in chemical Engineering Equipment
Part II—Microscopic Fluid Mechanics
5. Differential Equations of Fluid Mechanics
6. Solution of Viscous-Flow Problems
7. Laplace’s Equation, Irrotational and Porous-Media Flows
8. Boundary-Layer and Other Nearly Unidirectional Flows
10. Bubble Motion, Two-Phase Flow, and Fluidization
12. Microfluidics and Electrokinetic Flow Effects
13. An Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics and Fluent
14. COMSOL Multiphysics for Solving Fluid Mechanics Problems
In our experience, an undergraduate fluid mechanics course can be based on Part I plus selected parts of Part II, and a graduate course can be based on much of Part II, supplemented perhaps by additional material on topics such as approximate methods and stability.
Third edition. I have attempted to bring the book up to date by the major addition of Chapters 12, 13, and 14—one on microfluidics and two on CFD (computational fluid dynamics). The choice of software for the CFD presented a difficulty; for various reasons, I selected ANSYS Fluent and COMSOL Multiphysics, but there was no intention of “promoting” these in favor of other excellent CFD programs. The use of CFD examples in the classroom really makes the subject come “alive,” because the previous restrictive necessities of “nice” geometries and constant physical properties, etc., can now be lifted. Chapter 9, on turbulence, has also been extensively rewritten; here again, CFD allows us to venture beyond the usual flow in a pipe or between parallel plates and to investigate further practical situations such as turbulent mixing and recirculating flows.
Example problems. There is an average of about six completely worked examples in each chapter, including several involving COMSOL (dispersed throughout Part II) and Fluent (all in Chapter 13). The end of each example is marked by a small square: 
. All the COMSOL examples have been run with Version 5.2a, both on a Mac Book Pro computer and on Linux and Windows platforms; those using other releases of COMSOL may encounter slightly different windows than those reproduced here. The format for each COMSOL example is: (a) problem statement, (b) details of COMSOL implementation, (c) results, and (d) discussion.
The numerous end-of-chapter problems have been classified roughly as easy (E), moderate (M), or difficult/lengthy (D). The University of Cambridge has given permission—kindly endorsed by Professor J.F. Davidson, F.R.S.—for several of their chemical engineering examination problems to be reproduced in original or modified form, and these have been given the additional designation of “(C)”.
Acknowledgments. I gratefully acknowledge the valuable contributions of my former Michigan colleague Stacy Birmingham (non-Newtonian fluids), Brian Kirby of Cornell University (microfluidics), and Chi-Yang cheng of ANSYS, Inc. (CFD). My former doctoral student and good friend Kevin Ellwood has been enormously helpful with this third edition. Although I wrote most of the original examples and Chapter 14 (in COMSOL 3.2), Kevin has supplied all the necessary expertise to rewrite them in the longer and more comprehensive COMSOL 5.2a.
I have had much help from many people at COMSOL Inc. and COMSOL AB. On their part, it has been a great cooperative effort all the way, involving the COMSOL Development, Licensing, and Applications teams, and I am very grateful to all for their assistance. At ANSYS, Inc., Chi-Yang cheng was ideally suited for writing and updating the chapter on Computational Fluid Dynamics and Fluent.
I have appreciated the assistance of several other friends and colleagues, including Nitin Anturkar, Mark Burns, John Ellis, Scott Fogler, Amy Horvath, Leenaporn Jongpaiboonkit, Lisa Keyser, Ronald Larson, Susan Montgomery, Sunitha Nagrath, Michael Solomon, Sandra Swisher, Robert Ziff, my wife, Mary Ann Gibson Wilkes, and the late Stuart Churchill, Kartic Khilar, Donald Nicklin, Margaret Sansom, and Rasin Tek. I also drew much inspiration from my many students and friends at the University of Michigan and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Others are acknowledged in specific literature citations.
Also very helpful for this third edition were the Prentice Hall editing and production personnel, to whom I extend my gratitude: Laura Lewin, Kathleen Karcher, Michael Thurston, and Julie Nahil.
Further information. The website http://fmche.engin.umich.edu is maintained as a “bulletin board” for giving additional information about the book— hints for problem solutions, errata, how to contact the authors, etc.—as proves desirable. My own Internet address is [email protected]. The text was composed on an old but faithful Power Macintosh G5 computer using the TEXtures “type-setting” program. Eleven-point type was used for the majority of the text. Most of the figures were constructed using MacDraw Pro, Excel, and KaleidaGraph.
Professor Terence Fox, to whom this book is dedicated, was a Cambridge engineering graduate who worked from 1933 to 1937 at Imperial chemical Industries Ltd., Billingham, Yorkshire. Returning to Cambridge, he taught engineering from 1937 to 1946 before being selected to lead the Department of chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge during its formative years after the end of World War II. As a scholar and a gentleman, Fox was a shy but exceptionally brilliant person who had great insight into what was important and who quickly brought the department to a preeminent position, which it still maintains. He succeeded in combining an industrial perspective with intellectual rigor. Fox relinquished the leadership of the department in 1959, after he had secured a permanent new building for it (carefully designed in part by himself).1
1 The department—now chemical Engineering and Biotechnology—has just (2017) moved to a new building on the West Cambridge site.
Fox was instrumental in bringing an outstanding cast of faculty members into the department during my student years there—Stan Sellers, Kenneth Denbigh, John Davidson, Peter Danckwerts, Denys Armstrong, and Peter Gray. He also kindly accepted me in 1956 as a junior faculty member, and I spent four good years in the Cambridge University Department of chemical Engineering. Danckwerts subsequently wrote an appreciation2 of Fox’s talents, saying, with almost complete accuracy: “Fox instigated no research and published nothing.” How times have changed—today, unless he were known personally, his résumé would probably be cast aside and he would stand little chance of being hired, let alone of receiving tenure! However, his lectures, meticulously written handouts, enthusiasm, genius, and friendship were a great inspiration to me, and I have much pleasure in acknowledging his positive impact on my career.
2 P.V. Danckwerts, “chemical engineering comes to Cambridge,” The Cambridge Review , pp. 53–55, February 28, 1983.
James O. WilkesAugust 18, 2017