Flow Principles
Our discussion in this chapter will consider only a so-called ideal fluid, that is, liquid that is incompressible and has no internal friction or viscosity. The assumption of incompressibility is usually a good approximation for liquids. A gas can also be treated as incompressible if the differential presssure driving it is low. Internal friction in a fluid gives rise to shearing stresses when two adjacent layers of fluid move relative to each other, or when the fluid flows inside a tube or around an obstacle. In most cases in process control, these shearing forces can be ignored in contrast to gravitational forces or forces from differential pressures.