External Flow

Drag Forces
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External Flow: Why study fluid flow over solid bodies?

Fluid flow over solid bodies frequently occurs in practice, and it is responsible for
numerous physical phenomena such as:

• The drag force acting on automobiles, power lines, trees, and underwater pipelines;
• The lift developed by bird or airplane wings;
• the transportation of red blood cells by blood flow;
• The vibration and noise generated by bodies moving in a fluid;
• And the power generated by wind turbines.

A fluid moves over a stationary body(such as the wind blowing over a building), and
other times a body moves through a quiescent fluid (such as a car moving through air)
are referred to as flow over bodies or external flow.
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Flow over bodies is commonly

encountered in practice.
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The flow fields and geometries for most external flow problems are too complicated
and we have to rely on correlations based on experimental data.

• Free-stream velocity: The velocity of the fluid approaching a body (V or u∞ or U∞ )

• Two-dimensional flow: When the body is very long and of constant cross section and the
flow is normal to the body.
• Axisymmetric flow: When the body possesses rotational symmetry about an axis in the
flow direction. The flow in this case is also two-dimensional.
• Three-dimensional flow: Flow over a body that cannot be modeled as two-dimensional
or axisymmetric such as flow over a car.
• Incompressible flows: (e.g., flows over automobiles, submarines, and buildings)
• Compressible flows: (e.g., flows over high-speed aircraft, rockets, and missiles).
Compressibility effects are negligible at low velocities (flows with Ma < 0.3).
• Streamlined body: If a conscious effort is made to align its shape with the anticipated
streamlines in the flow. Streamlined bodies such as race cars and airplanes appear to be
contoured and sleek.
• Bluff or blunt body: If a body (such as a building) tends to block the flow. Usually it is
much easier to force a streamlined body through a fluid.
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Drag and Lift
A body meets some resistance when it is forced to move through a fluid, especially a liquid.
A fluid may exert forces and moments on a body in and about various directions.

Drag: The force a flowing fluid exerts on a body in the flow direction. It is due to the
combined effects of pressure and wall shear forces in the flow direction.

Drag is usually an undesirable effect, like friction, and we do our best to minimize it. But in
some cases drag produces a very beneficial effect and we try to maximize it (e.g., automobile
brakes).
High winds knock down trees, power lines, and even people as a result of the drag force.

Lift: The force a flowing fluid exerts on a body in the direction normal to the flow. The
components of the pressure and wall shear forces in the direction normal to the flow tend
to move the body in that direction, and their sum is called lift.

Lift is the force that directly opposes the weight of an airplane and holds the airplane in the air.
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Drag and Lift
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Drag and Lift

The wings of airplanes are shaped and positioned specifically to generate lift with minimal
drag. This is done by maintaining an angle of attack during cruising. . Both lift and drag are
strong functions of the angle of attack.

Airplane wings are shaped and positioned to

generate sufficient lift during flight while keeping
drag at a minimum. Pressures above and below
atmospheric pressure are indicated by plus and
minus signs, respectively
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• The drag and lift forces depend on the density 𝜌 of the fluid, the upstream velocity V, and the
size, shape, and orientation of the body, among other things.
• Instead, it is more convenient to work with appropriate dimensionless numbers that represent
the drag and lift characteristics of the body. These numbers are the drag coefficient 𝐶𝐷 , and
the lift coefficient 𝐶𝐿

A is the frontal area (the area projected on a plane normal to the

direction of flow). A is the area seen by a person looking at the
body from the direction of the approaching fluid. The frontal area
of a cylinder of diameter D and length L, for example, is A = LD

In lift and drag calculations of some thin bodies, such as airfoils, A is taken to be the planform area, which is the
area seen by a person looking at the body from above in a direction normal to the body.

The local drag and lift coefficients vary along the surface as a result of the changes in the velocity boundary
layer in the flow direction.
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1 Friction and Pressure Drag
The drag force is the net force exerted by a fluid on a body in the direction of flow due to
the combined effects of wall shear and pressure forces.
• Drag due directly to wall shear stress 𝜏w is called the skin friction drag (or just friction drag 𝐹𝐷,𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ) since it
is caused by frictional effects
• Drag due directly to pressure P is called the pressure drag (also called the form drag because of its strong
dependence on the form or shape of the body).

• The friction drag depends on the orientation of the body as well as the magnitude of the wall
shear stress 𝜏𝑤 .
• The friction drag is zero for a flat surface normal to the flow, and maximum for a flat surface
parallel to the flow since the friction drag in this case equals the total shear force on the
surface.
• For parallel flow over a flat surface, the drag coefficient is equal to the friction drag
coefficient, or simply the friction coefficient.
• Friction drag is a strong function of viscosity, and increases with increasing viscosity.
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Drag is due entirely to friction drag for a flat plate

parallel to the flow; it is due entirely to pressure drag
for a flat plate normal to the flow; and it is due to both
(but mostly pressure drag) for a cylinder normal to the
flow. The total drag coefficient 𝐶𝐷 is lowest for a
parallel flat plate, highest for a vertical flat plate, and
in between (but close to that of a vertical flat plate) for
a cylinder.
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3 Re number is inversely proportional to the viscosity of the fluid.
• The contribution of friction drag to total drag for blunt bodies is less at higher Re and may be negligible at
very high Re. The drag in such cases is mostly due to pressure drag.
• At low Re, most drag is due to friction drag. This is especially the case for highly streamlined bodies such as
airfoils.

The friction drag is also proportional to the surface area.

• Bodies with a larger surface area experience a larger friction drag. Large commercial airplanes, for example,
reduce their total surface area and thus their drag by retracting their wing extensions when they reach cruising
altitudes to save fuel.
• The friction drag coefficient is independent of surface roughness in laminar flow, but is a strong function of
surface roughness in turbulent flow due to surface roughness elements protruding further into the boundary
layer.
The pressure drag is proportional to the frontal area and to the difference between the pressures acting
on the front and back of the immersed body.
• The pressure drag is usually dominant for blunt bodies, small for streamlined bodies such as airfoils, and
zero for thin flat plates parallel to the flow.
• The pressure drag becomes most significant when the velocity of the fluid is too high for the fluid to be
able to follow the curvature of the body, and thus the fluid separates from the body at some point and
creates a very low pressure region in the back.
• The pressure drag in this case is due to the large pressure difference between the front and back sides of
the body.
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4 Reducing Drag by Streamlining
• Streamlining a body make it possible to reduce flow separation and thus to reduce
pressure drag.
• Streamlining decreases pressure drag by delaying boundary layer separation and thus
reducing the pressure difference between the front and back of the body; but increases
the friction drag by increasing the surface area.
• The end result depends on which effect dominates. Therefore, any optimization study to
reduce the drag of a body must consider both effects and must attempt to minimize the
sum of the two.

The minimum total drag occurs at D/L = 0.25

The variation of friction, pressure, and total

drag coefficients of a two-dimensional
streamlined strut with thickness-to-chord
length ratio for Re = 4 × 104 .
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Let’s consider a long elliptical cylinders with different aspect (or length-to-thickness) ratios L/D, where L is the
length in the flow direction and D is the thickness

• The drag coefficient decreases drastically as the ellipse

becomes slimmer.
• For a circular cylinder, the drag coefficient is CD ≅ 1 at this
Reynolds number.
• As the aspect ratio is decreased and the cylinder resembles a
flat plate, the drag coefficient increases to 1.9, the value for
a flat plate normal to flow.
• The curve becomes nearly flat for aspect ratios greater than
about 4.

Therefore, for a given diameter D, elliptical shapes with an

aspect ratio of about L/D ≅ 4 usually offer a good
compromise between the total drag coefficient and length L.
The variation of the drag coefficient of a long elliptical
cylinder with aspect ratio. Here CD is based on the
frontal area bD where b is the width of the body.
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The reduction in the drag coefficient at high aspect ratios is
primarily due to the boundary layer staying attached to the
surface longer and the resulting pressure recovery.

Streamlining has the added benefit of reducing vibration

and noise.

Streamlining should be considered only for blunt bodies

that are subjected to high-velocity fluid flow (and thus high
Reynolds numbers) for which flow separation is a real
possibility.

Streamlining is not necessary for bodies that typically

involve low Reynolds number flows.

NB: frontal area is inappropriate for use in the drag force

relations for slim bodies such as thin airfoils and flat
plates. In such cases, the drag coefficient is defined on the
basis of the planform area
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7 Flow Separation
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• Separated region: When a fluid separates from a body, it

forms a separated region between the body and the fluid
stream. This is a low-pressure region behind the body
where recirculating and backflows occur.
• The larger the separated region, the larger the pressure drag.
The effects of flow separation are felt far downstream in the
form of reduced velocity (relative to the upstream velocity).
• Wake: The region of flow trailing the body where the
effects of the body on velocity are felt. Flow separation and the wake
region for flow over a tennis
• Viscous and rotational effects are the most significant in the ball.
boundary layer, the separated region, and the wake.
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• At large angles of attack (usually larger than 15°), flow may

separate completely from the top surface of an airfoil, reducing
lift drastically and causing the airfoil to stall.
• An important consequence of flow separation is the formation
and shedding of circulating fluid structures, called vortices, in
the wake region.
• The periodic generation of these vortices downstream is
referred to as vortex shedding.
• The vibrations generated by vortices near the body may cause
the body to resonate to dangerous levels.
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0 Drag Coefficients Of Common Geometries
The drag behavior of various natural and human-made bodies is characterized by their drag coefficients measured
under typical operating conditions. Usually the total (friction+pressure) drag coefficient is reported.

The drag coefficient exhibits different behavior in the low

(creeping), moderate (laminar), and high (turbulent)
regions of the Reynolds number. The inertia effects are
negligible in low Reynolds number flows (Re < 1), called
creeping flows, and the fluid wraps around the body
smoothly.

The drag coefficient for many (but not all) Stokes law
geometries remains essentially constant at Stokes law: is often applicable to dust particles in the air
Reynolds numbers above about 104 . and suspended solid particles in water.
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8 PARALLEL FLOW OVER FLAT PLATES
• Velocity boundary layer: The region of the flow above the plate bounded by 𝛿 in which the effects of the
viscous shearing forces caused by fluid viscosity are felt.
• The boundary layer thickness 𝛿 is typically defined as the distance y from the surface at which u = 0.99V.

The hypothetical curve of u = 0.99V divides the flow into two regions:
• Boundary layer region: The viscous effects and the velocity changes are significant.
• Irotational flow region: The frictional effects are negligible and the velocity remains essentially constant.

The development of the boundary layer for flow over a flat

plate, and the different flow regimes. Not to scale.
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