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Preface

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"In the beginning, the POTTO project was without form, and void; and emptiness was upon the face of the bits and files. And the Fingers of the Author moved upon the face of the keyboard. And the Author said, Let there be words, and there were words."

This book, Fundamentals of Compressible Flow, describes the fundamentals of compressible flow phenomena for engineers and others. This book is designed to replace the book(s) or instructor's notes for the compressible flow in (mostly) undergraduate classes for engineering/science students. It is hoped that the book could be used as a reference book for people who have at least some knowledge of the basics of fundamental fluid mechanics, and basic science such as calculus, physics, etc. It is hoped that the computer program enclosed in the book will take on a life of its own and develop into an open content or source project.

The structure of this book is such that many of the chapters could be usable independently. For example, if you need information about, say, Fanno flow, you can read just chapter 9. I hope this makes the book easier to use as a reference manual. However, this manuscript is first and foremost a textbook, and secondly a reference manual only as a lucky coincidence.

I have tried to describe why the theories are the way they are, rather than just listing ``seven easy steps'' for each task. This means that a lot of information is presented which is not necessary for everyone. These explanations have been marked as such and can be skipped.¹⁵Reading everything will, naturally, increase your understanding of the fundamentals of compressible fluid flow.

This book is written and maintained on a volunteer basis. Like all volunteer work, there is a limit on how much effort I was able to put into the book and its organization. Moreover, due to the fact that English is my third language and time limitations, the explanations are not as good as if I had a few years to perfect them. Nevertheless, I believe professionals working in many engineering fields will benefit from this information. This book contains many original models, and explanations never published before.

I have left some issues which have unsatisfactory explanations in the book, marked with a Mata mark. I hope to improve or to add to these areas in the near future. Furthermore, I hope that many others will participate of this project and will contribute to this book (even small contributions such as providing examples or editing mistakes are needed).

I have tried to make this text of the highest quality possible and am interested in your comments and ideas on how to make it better. Incorrect language, errors, ideas for new areas to cover, rewritten sections, more fundamental material, more mathematics (or less mathematics); I am interested in it all. If you want to be involved in the editing, graphic design, or proofreading, please drop me a line. You may contact me via Email at barmeir at gmail.com.

Naturally, this book contains material that never was published before. This material never went through a peer review. While peer review and publication in a professional publication is excellent idea in theory. In practice, this process leaves a large room to blockage of novel ideas and plagiarism. If you would like be ``peer reviews'' or critic to my new ideas please send me your idea(s). Even reaction/comments from individuals like David Marshall¹⁶

Several people have helped me with this book, directly or indirectly. I would like to especially thank to my adviser, Dr. E. R. G. Eckert, whose work was the inspiration for this book. I also would like to thank Amy Ross for her advice ideas, and assistance.

The symbol META was added to provide typographical conventions to blurb as needed. This is mostly for the author's purposes and also for your amusement. There are also notes in the margin, but those are solely for the author's purposes, ignore them please. They will be removed gradually as the version number advances.

I encourage anyone with a penchant for writing, editing, graphic ability, L^ATEX knowledge, and material knowledge and a desire to provide open content textbooks and to improve them to join me in this project. If you have Internet e-mail access, you can contact me at barmeir at gmail.com.

Next: To Do List and Up: gasDynamics Previous: Version 0.4.1.7 Index

Created by:Genick Bar-Meir, Ph.D.
On: 2007-11-21