General Incompressible Potential Flow Theory
The Incompressible Potential Flow interface is used to simulate irrotational, inviscid, and incompressible flow. The continuity equation for incompressible flow can be expressed as a divergence-free constraint for the velocity
(3-79)
Moreover, irrotational flow is described as
(3-80)
As the curl of the gradient of a scalar field is zero by definition, the velocity can be approximated as the gradient of a scalar velocity potential,
ϕ
,
(3-81)
so that
Equation 3-79
and
Equation 3-81
result in the Laplace equation
(3-82)
The local gauge pressure can be obtained from Bernoulli’s equation
(3-83)
where
(3-84)
and
U
scale
is the user-defined free-stream velocity.
