Fundamental Fluid Mechanics and Magnetohydrodynamics

This book is primarily intended to enable postgraduate research students to enhance their understanding and expertise in Fluid Mechanics and Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), subjects no longer treated in isolation. The exercises throughout the book often serve to provide additional and quite significant knowledge or to develop selected mathematical skills, and may also fill in certain details or enhance readers’ understanding of essential concepts. A previous background or some preliminary reading in either of the two core subjects would be advantageous, and prior knowledge of multivariate calculus and differential equations is expected.

Roger Hosking has been a mathematics professor for more than 40 years. His published research has extended from MHD instability to various topics in fluid mechanics such as shallow flow over curved beds and waves, and he is particularly well known for mathematical modelling of moving loads on ice sheets and floating ladder rail tracks. He co-authored the research monograph "Moving Loads on Ice Plates" and co-edited "Aspects of Mathematical Modelling" (both available from Springer), and earlier co-authored a textbook for beginning undergraduate students entitled "First Steps in Numerical Analysis". Professor Hosking is a Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and a Managing Editor of the East Asian Journal on Applied Mathematics.

Professor Dewar has more than 40 years experience as a researcher in the general area of theoretical plasma physics, which provides a rich array of problems in classical field theory, fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, and kinetic theory. He has well over 100 publications in refereed journals, and in the field of MHD in particular he is well known as a pioneer in the use of semiclassical (WKB) methods for understanding wave propagation and the spectrum of instabilities in complex geometries, with applications ranging from astrophysics to fusion power research. He has co-edited five books containing the proceedings of summer schools, workshops and conferences. Professor Dewar is a Member of the Australian Mathematical Society and is an Associate Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics Journal. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the Australian Academy of Science.