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New journal to showcase real world applications of Fluid Mechanics

A new Open Access journal from Cambridge University Press will highlight the many ways that advances in fluid mechanics – the study of how fluids flow and move – can be used to drive technological breakthroughs and unlock the secrets of the natural world.

New journal to showcase real world applications of Fluid Mechanics
Juan G. Santiago: “Flow can serve the scientific community as a mechanism to proliferate the powerful and versatile tools of fluid mechanics across many, if not most, applied fields of study.”

Flow: Applications of Fluid Mechanics will cover the application of fluid mechanics to concrete problems across all fields, including technology, natural and medical sciences, and descriptions of the physical world.

Knowledge of fluid mechanics has informed everything from energy production, the distribution water for drinking and irrigation, flight and transportation, to biomedical devices and the exploration of space, says Cambridge University Press. It also plays a critical role in our understanding of living things and how they interact with the biosphere, from bacterial locomotion, to bird flight and the impact of human technology on the Earth's climate.

While other journals focus on fluid mechanics within specific subject areas, say the publishers, Flow will cast its net much wider, showcasing all applications to new technology, biology and descriptions of the physical world.

Editor-in-Chief is Juan G. Santiago, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He said: “Flow can serve the scientific community as a mechanism to proliferate the powerful and versatile tools of fluid mechanics across many, if not most, applied fields of study.

“Each paper should have one hand grasped firmly on a fundamental concept of fluid mechanics and a second hand grasping, or at least reaching directly toward, a concrete application. They should highlight how fluid mechanics is leveraged to enable new technologies and new understanding of nature.”

He added: “To readers who are fluid mechanicians, we hope to offer accessible introductions to new and varied applications. Indeed, we aspire to expose such researchers to areas far from their current field but to which they might make new and impactful contributions.

“To readers who are outside of fluid mechanics, we hope to provide an introduction to the powerful and varied tools it offers. Of course, for all readers, we will strive to offer high-quality, succinct and insightful papers that demonstrate how the study of fluid flow can change our world.”

Flow will act as a companion journal to the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (JFM), which has covered the fundamental aspects of the discipline since it was founded by George K. Batchelor in 1956. The launch of Flow coincides with the 65th anniversary of JFM and the 100th anniversary of Batchelor’s birth.

Caroline Black, Publishing Director of STM Journals at the Press, said: “Fluid mechanics has helped to unlock much of what underpins our modern world and it continues to provide new and important insights.

“Our ever more interconnected world presents us with the opportunity – and the need – to share those insights and unlock their potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Flow will play an important role in that process, speeding the translation of research into real world uses”.

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