STOKES FLOW
STOKES FLOW Stokes flow (named after George Gabriel Stokes ), also named creeping flow or creeping motion , is a type of fluid flow where advective inertial forces are small compared with viscous forces. The Reynolds number is low, i.e. . This is a typical situation in flows where the fluid velocities are very slow, the viscosities are very large, or the length-scales of the flow are very small. Creeping flow was first studied to understand lubrication . In nature this type of flow occurs in the swimming of microorganisms and sperm . In technology, it occurs in paint , MEMS devices, and in the flow of viscous polymers generally. The equations of motion for Stokes flow, called the Stokes equations, are a linearization of the Navier–Stokes equations , and thus can be solved by a number of w...