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Compressible flow (or gas dynamics) is the branch of fluid mechanics that deals with flows having significant changes in fluid density.While all flows are compressible, flows are usually treated as being incompressible when the Mach number (the ratio of the speed of the flow to the speed of sound) is smaller than 0.3 (since the density change due to velocity is about 5% in that case). [1]
In fluid dynamics, a flow is considered incompressible if the divergence of the flow velocity is zero. However, related formulations can sometimes be used, depending on the flow system being modelled. Some versions are described below: Incompressible flow: =. This can assume either constant density (strict incompressible) or varying density flow.
From a strictly aerodynamic point of view, the term should refer only to those side-effects arising as a result of the changes in airflow from an incompressible fluid (similar in effect to water) to a compressible fluid (acting as a gas) as the speed of sound is approached. There are two effects in particular, wave drag and critical mach.
As a rough guide, compressible effects can be ignored at Mach numbers below approximately 0.3. For liquids, whether the incompressible assumption is valid depends on the fluid properties (specifically the critical pressure and temperature of the fluid) and the flow conditions (how close to the critical pressure the actual flow pressure becomes).
The mathematical characters of the incompressible and compressible Euler equations are rather different. For constant fluid density, the incompressible equations can be written as a quasilinear advection equation for the fluid velocity together with an elliptic Poisson's equation for the pressure.
As it moves, the mass of a fluid parcel remains constant, while—in a compressible flow—its volume may change, [2] [3] and its shape changes due to distortion by the flow. [1] In an incompressible flow, the volume of the fluid parcel is also a constant (isochoric flow).
An incompressible flow is a flow in which density is constant in both time and space. Although all real fluids are compressible, a flow is often approximated as incompressible if the effect of the density changes cause only small changes to the calculated results.
so that for incompressible, irrotational flow (=), the second term on the left in the Navier-Stokes equation is just the gradient of the dynamic pressure. In hydraulics , the term u 2 / 2 g {\displaystyle u^{2}/2g} is known as the hydraulic velocity head (h v ) so that the dynamic pressure is equal to ρ g h v {\displaystyle \rho gh_{v}} .