Engineering Fluid Mechanics [Hardcover]

John A. Roberson (Author), Clayton T. Crowe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471147354 | ISBN-13: 978-0471147350 | Publication Date: October 31, 1996 | Edition: 6

This book examines the general nature of fluid dynamics. It introduces basic principles—pressure variation, momentum principle, energy equations—in early chapters and then uses these principles in general applications, such as drag and lift, flow meters, and flow in conduits.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Always accurate and accessible

Known for its exceptionally readable approach, Crowe, Elger, and Robertson's ENGINEERING FLUID MECHANICS carefully guides readers from fundamental fluid mechanics concepts to real-world engineering applications.

The Seventh Edition of this student-friendly text fosters a strong conceptual understanding of fluid flow phenomena through lucid physical descriptions, photographs, clear illustrations, and fully worked example problems. More than 1,100 problems, including open-ended design problems and computer-oriented problems, provide an opportunity to apply fluid mechanics principles. Throughout, the authors have meticulously reviewed all problems, solutions, and text material to ensure accuracy.

Enhancements and revisions to the Seventh Edition

• Expanded material on the analysis of hydrostatic forces on curved surfaces.
• New material on the concept of system, control volume, and control surface.
• Improved physical description f the concept of flow rotation.
• A simpler approach to the development of the Bernoulli equation.
• Revised chapter on the momentum equation, featuring force and momentum diagrams to visualize the concepts.
• Revised coverage of the use of the step-by-step method of dimensional analysis, making the approach considerably easier to understand and utilize.
• New material on error analysis in flow measurement.
• Summaries at the end of each chapter
• 94 new and 310 revised problems (more than 1,100 problems in all).

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 6 edition (October 31, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471147354
• ISBN-13: 978-0471147350
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Undergrad Masterpiece, April 24, 2002

By 

ME (NJIT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering Fluid Mechanics (Hardcover)

This text is a great introduction to Fluid Mechanics. The derivations are very easy to follow, and the problems apply to many real life situations. For graduate students, it may be a little to light weight, but for undergrads it provides a broad base of information.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay reference book, January 20, 2005

By 

David Kahler (Ithaca, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Engineering Fluid Mechanics (Hardcover)

This text was used in a class where I was the teaching assistant. There were numerous complaints from students about how the text was difficult to follow, and in some cases the examples were even incomplete. This was a class for junior engineering students as a first thorough course in fluids, the text was not helpful. As a graduate student I found it to be a good reference of basic concepts (although, it was hard for me to follow some of the examples). It even goes in depth with many concepts. All in all it is a good basic reference, but totally inadequate for beginning instruction.

As a note to instructors, the solution manual is loaded with errors.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth it., November 19, 2005

By 

A. Kalbag "Myth_killer" (Pullman, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Engineering Fluid Mechanics (Hardcover)

I took my undergrad fluid mechanics course using Crowe's lightweight doorstop. I took the course from Dr. Crowe himself. He certainly knows his fluid mechanics but if you go by his course and this book then he does not seem the least bit interested in handing down his knowledge to his students. At the time, about 2 years ago I gave this a 3/5 rating based upon my own naive assumption that I had a solid undergraduate background in fluid mechanics thanks to diligently studying and reading everything in this text. But it really took a graduate level fluids course to make me realize the serious deficiencies in this textbook. Save your hard earned money this book deserves zero stars and here's why:

The major drawbacks of the text are
1. No development of the differential forms of the govering equations. Conservation of mass, momentum and energy are all developed using the integral approach (via Reynolds Transport Theorem). He mentions the Navier-Stokes Equations in barely 2 pages and there is no further discussion about it. You could tear those pages out and you wouldn't lose continuity in the book (pun intended). No theoretical development thereafter requires the Navier-Stokes Equations. No surprise that solutions to the Navier Stokes equations are not included except for Couette and Poiseuille flows which are developed without the classical methods of simplifying the NS equations.

2. Lack of substantial mathematical sophistication. Fluid mechanics is best described with vector calculus and differtial equation. Surely there are many problems that are solvable with algebraic methods but Crowe essentially avoids anything mathematical. Therefore problem sets are suitably simplified so as to be amenable by the simplest mathematics. This is partly a consequence of doing away with the differential approach.

3. No mention of stream functions or potential flows!

4. This book misleads the novice into thinking that the panacea of all fluid mechanics problems is Bernoulli's equation. That is all you will really need to solve the problems in this text (apart from looking at the many tables, charts and graphs to find friction factors, drag coefficients, head loss factors and what have you). The unsteady form of Bernoulli's equation is left out; a consequence of omitting potential flows. The reader isn't told that Bernoulli's equation is a simplification of Euler's equations (only shown in streamwise co-ordinates) which are themselves a simplification of the Navier stokes equations.

5. There is very little development of fluid kinematics. No mention of the Langrangian derivative (and if there was it was again perfunctory and disposed off never to be recalled again). Vorticity is mentioned in passing and a few problems assigned which ammount to doing a bunch of cross products! The interplay between fluid rotationality (or irrotationality), viscosity (or lack of viscosity) and incompressibility and how they lead to the special (read: simpler) forms of the governing equations (namely Euler's and Bernoulli's equation) is omitted. Fluid element deformations and stress-strain arguments are left out in the cold (no need for them if you are washing your hands off of the differential approach).

5. Boundary layer theory is developed without stressing the classical length scale arguments that go into them, turbulence is restricted to using empirical correlations.

All these deficiencies in concept and mathematics were corrected only after I took a graduate level fluid mechanics course which essentially amounted me having to relearn everything considered "prerequisite" in addition to keeping up with the new material. Thoroughly deserves 0 stars. Don't take my word for it, use the book preview at Amazon.com and check out the table of contents. I suggest comparing this with the highly recommended undergraduate texts by Fox & Macdonald, or Munson, Young and Okiishi, or Frank White's excellent undergraduate text.