Fluid and thermodynamics. Volume 1. Basic fluid mechanics (Q302238)

This book is devoted to the theories of fluid and thermodynamics that generally are taught at technical universities as separate subjects, although, as the authors write in the Preface, ``[i]ntellectually, the two subjects [...] belong together, especially since for all but ideal fluids the second law of thermodynamics imposes constraint conditions on the parameters of the governing equations (generally partial differential equations) that are then used in the fluid dynamic part of the joint effort to construct solutions to physically motivated initial boundary value problems that teach us important facts of the behavior of the motion of the fluid under certain circumstances.'' The first author was confronted with this combination of fluid and thermodynamics as an assigned one-semester course when he started in 1987 at the Department of Mechanics at Technische Universität Darmstadt/Germany and has since taught it at there, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ) and in guest lectures in advanced courses at other universities and research institutions worldwide. The volume consists of 10 chapters, some of the included topics are: fluid mechanics; continuum mechanics and thermodynamics; mechanics of environmentally related systems (glacier, ice-sheet mechanics, physical oceanography, lake physics, soil motion, avalanches, debris, and mud flows); vorticity and angular momentum; turbulence modeling (of zeroth, first and second order); regular and singular perturbations; continuum mechanics and thermodynamics of mixtures; continuum mechanics and thermodynamics of Cosserat continua and Cosserat mixtures; theoretical glaciology; shallow creeping flows of landslides, glaciers, and ice sheets, as well as many other topics. In the reviewer's opinion, this book is exemplary presented and fills an important gap in the literature, as it has been written specifically for students to acquire the basic knowledge of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics, with particular attention to the topic of boundary layer theory, which is very topcial at present. The book is not an attempt to survey all the areas of fluid mechanics, nor of thermodynamics, which would be a gargantuan task. Rather, the book delivers an excellent account of what I believe is an appropriate collection of subjects in very topical areas.