Fluid Mechanics a Short

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

This volume consists of six articles, each treating an important topic in the theory ofthe Navier-Stokes equations, at the research level. Some of the articles are mainly expository, putting together, in a unified setting, the results of recent research papers and conference lectures. Several other articles are devoted mainly to new results, but present them within a wider context and with a fuller exposition than is usual for journals. The plan to publish these articles as a book began with the lecture notes for the short courses of G.P. Galdi and R. Rannacher, given at the beginning of the International Workshop on Theoretical and Numerical Fluid Dynamics, held in Vancouver, Canada, July 27 to August 2, 1996. A renewed energy for this project came with the founding of the Journal of Mathematical Fluid Mechanics, by G.P. Galdi, J. Heywood, and R. Rannacher, in 1998. At that time it was decided that this volume should be published in association with the journal, and expanded to include articles by J. Heywood and W. Nagata, J. Heywood and M. Padula, and P. Gervasio, A. Quarteroni and F. Saleri. The original lecture notes were also revised and updated.

These notes are based on a one-quarter (i. e. very short) course in fluid mechanics taught in the Department of Mathematics of the University of California, Berkeley during the Spring of 1978. The goal of the course was not to provide an exhaustive account of fluid mechanics, nor to assess the engineering value of various approxima­ tion procedures. The goals were: (i) to present some of the basic ideas of fluid mechanics in a mathematically attractive manner (which does not mean "fully rigorous"); (ii) to present the physical back­ ground and motivation for some constructions which have been used in recent mathematical and numerical work on the Navier-Stokes equations and on hyperbolic systems; (iil. ) 'to interest some of the students in this beautiful and difficult subject.

This volume contains 37 invited contributions, collected to celebrate one hundred volumes of the NNFM Series. After a general introduction overviews are given in five parts of the developments in numerical fluid mechanics and related fields. In the first part information about the series is given, its origins are discussed, as well as its environment and the German and European high-performance computer scene.