Computational Fluid and Space-Phase Flows

Module code: PA4611

When the number of particles in a system becomes too large, we must stop treating it as individual particles and start understanding it as a collective. This the case for fluids – gasses, liquids and plasmas – on all scales from the everyday to the astronomical. It is also true for large groups of objects, like birds in a giant flock, or stars in a galaxy. These behaviours can be understood as ‘flows’: either the familiar flow of a fluid, which varies with position; or a flow that varies with position and velocity (know together as ‘phase-space’) when considering, for example, stars in a galaxy. 

In the first part of this module, you will learn the framework that allows us to describe these flows mathematically, and find analytical solutions to idealised examples of fluid flows to build intuition about their properties. This includes shocks, vorticity, and fluid instabilities. In the second part of the module you will apply this knowledge to ‘real world’ problems, where analytical solutions are impossible and we have to compute the behaviour of the fluid or groups of objects numerically. The programming required will be done in Python. The techniques used for these computations are applicable across the full range of physical scales, and you will work directly on examples from astrophysics. 

Topics covered 

• Methods to describe the behaviour a multi-particle system as a collective
• The behaviour of fluids under different conditions 
• Computational methods for modelling fluid and phase-space dynamics.