Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction to concepts
- 2 The fluid equations
- 3 Gravitation
- 4 The energy equation
- 5 Hydrostatic equilibrium
- 6 Propagation of sound waves
- 7 Supersonic flows
- 8 Blast waves
- 9 Bernoulli's equation
- 10 Fluid instabilities
- 11 Viscous flows
- 12 Accretion discs in astrophysics
- 13 Plasmas
- Appendix Equations in curvilinear coordinates
- Exercises
- Books for background and further reading
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction to concepts
- 2 The fluid equations
- 3 Gravitation
- 4 The energy equation
- 5 Hydrostatic equilibrium
- 6 Propagation of sound waves
- 7 Supersonic flows
- 8 Blast waves
- 9 Bernoulli's equation
- 10 Fluid instabilities
- 11 Viscous flows
- 12 Accretion discs in astrophysics
- 13 Plasmas
- Appendix Equations in curvilinear coordinates
- Exercises
- Books for background and further reading
- Index
Summary
The material in this book is based on lecture notes of a course on astrophysical fluid dynamics which has been given for several years to third-year students at the University of Cambridge. There are several excellent books which cover fluid dynamics from a terrestrial standpoint, but very few provide a full introduction to the concepts and methods used to deal with the highly compressible flows which arise in astrophysical contexts. Our aim with this book is to provide just such an introduction, and we hope that it will also serve as a reference volume for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.
Several people have provided input at various stages of the preparation of this book. In particular we thank Jim Pringle, Donald Lynden-Bell and Giuseppe Lodato for their help. We are also grateful to the students who have taken the course at Cambridge for correcting typographical errors in the lecture notes, drawing our attention to parts where the description was less clear than it should have been, and helping us to develop the exercises.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Principles of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics , pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007