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ANewtonian fluid is afluid in which theviscous stresses arising from itsflow are at every point linearly correlated to the localstrain rate — therate of change of itsdeformation over time.[1][2][3][4] Stresses are proportional to magnitude of the fluid'svelocity vector.
A fluid is Newtonian only if thetensors that describe the viscous stress and the strain rate are related by a constantviscosity tensor that does not depend on the stress state and velocity of the flow. If the fluid is alsoisotropic (i.e., its mechanical properties are the same along any direction), the viscosity tensor reduces to two real coefficients, describing the fluid's resistance to continuousshear deformation and continuouscompression or expansion, respectively.
Newtonian fluids are the easiestmathematical models of fluids that account for viscosity. While no real fluid fits the definition perfectly, many common liquids and gases, such as water and air, can be assumed to be Newtonian for practical calculations under ordinary conditions. However,non-Newtonian fluids are relatively common and includeoobleck (which becomes stiffer when vigorously sheared) and non-drippaint (which becomesthinner when sheared). Other examples include manypolymer solutions (which exhibit theWeissenberg effect), molten polymers, many solid suspensions, blood, and most highly viscous fluids.
Newtonian fluids are named afterIsaac Newton, who first used thedifferential equation to postulate the relation between the shear strain rate andshear stress for such fluids.
An element of a flowing liquid or gas will endure forces from the surrounding fluid, includingviscous stress forces that cause it to gradually deform over time. These forces can be mathematicallyfirst order approximated by aviscous stress tensor, usually denoted by.
The deformation of a fluid element, relative to some previous state, can be first order approximated by astrain tensor that changes with time. The time derivative of that tensor is thestrain rate tensor, that expresses how the element's deformation is changing with time; and is also thegradient of the velocityvector field at that point, often denoted.
The tensors and can be expressed by 3×3matrices, relative to any chosencoordinate system. The fluid is said to be Newtonian if these matrices are related by theequationwhere is a fixed 3×3×3×3 fourth order tensor that does not depend on the velocity or stress state of the fluid.
For anincompressible and isotropic Newtonian fluid inlaminar flow only in the direction x (i.e. where viscosity is isotropic in the fluid), the shear stress is related to the strain rate by the simpleconstitutive equationwhere
In case of a general 2D incompressibile flow in the plane x, y, the Newton constitutive equation become:
where:
We can now generalize to the case of anincompressible flow with a general direction in the 3D space, the above constitutive equation becomeswhere
or written in more compact tensor notationwhere is the flow velocity gradient.
An alternative way of stating this constitutive equation is:
whereis the rate-of-strain tensor. So this decomposition can be made explicit as:[5]
This constitutive equation is also called theNewton law of viscosity.
The totalstress tensor can always be decomposed as the sum of theisotropic stress tensor and thedeviatoric stress tensor ():
In the incompressible case, the isotropic stress is simply proportional to the thermodynamicpressure:
and the deviatoric stress is coincident with the shear stress tensor:
The stressconstitutive equation then becomesor written in more compact tensor notationwhere is the identity tensor.
The Newton's constitutive law for a compressible flow results from the following assumptions on the Cauchy stress tensor:[5]
where is theidentity tensor, and is thetrace of the rate-of-strain tensor. So this decomposition can be explicitly defined as:
Since thetrace of the rate-of-strain tensor in three dimensions is thedivergence (i.e. rate of expansion) of the flow:
Given this relation, and since the trace of the identity tensor in three dimensions is three:
the trace of the stress tensor in three dimensions becomes:
So by alternatively decomposing the stress tensor intoisotropic anddeviatoric parts, as usual in fluid dynamics:[6]
Introducing thebulk viscosity,
we arrive to the linearconstitutive equation in the form usually employed inthermal hydraulics:[5]
which can also be arranged in the other usual form:[7]
Note that in the compressible case the pressure is no more proportional to theisotropic stress term, since there is the additional bulk viscosity term:
and thedeviatoric stress tensor is still coincident with the shear stress tensor (i.e. the deviatoric stress in a Newtonian fluid has no normal stress components), and it has a compressibility term in addition to the incompressible case, which is proportional to the shear viscosity:
Note that the incompressible case correspond to the assumption that the pressure constrains the flow so that the volume offluid elements is constant:isochoric flow resulting in asolenoidal velocity field with.[8]So one returns to the expressions for pressure and deviatoric stress seen in the preceding paragraph.
Both bulk viscosity and dynamic viscosity need not be constant – in general, they depend on two thermodynamics variables if the fluid contains a single chemical species, say for example, pressure and temperature. Any equation that makes explicit one of thesetransport coefficient in theconservation variables is called anequation of state.[9]
Apart from its dependence of pressure and temperature, the second viscosity coefficient also depends on the process, that is to say, the second viscosity coefficient is not just a material property. Example: in the case of a sound wave with a definitive frequency that alternatively compresses and expands a fluid element, the second viscosity coefficient depends on the frequency of the wave. This dependence is called thedispersion. In some cases, thesecond viscosity can be assumed to be constant in which case, the effect of the volume viscosity is that the mechanical pressure is not equivalent to the thermodynamicpressure:[10] as demonstrated below.However, this difference is usually neglected most of the time (that is whenever we are not dealing with processes such as sound absorption and attenuation of shock waves,[11] where second viscosity coefficient becomes important) by explicitly assuming. The assumption of setting is called as theStokes hypothesis.[12] The validity of Stokes hypothesis can be demonstrated for monoatomic gas both experimentally and from the kinetic theory;[13] for other gases and liquids, Stokes hypothesis is generally incorrect.
Finally, note that Stokes hypothesis is less restrictive that the one of incompressible flow. In fact, in the incompressible flow both the bulk viscosity term, and the shear viscosity term in the divergence of the flow velocity term disappears, while in the Stokes hypothesis the first term also disappears but the second one still remains.
More generally, in a non-isotropic Newtonian fluid, the coefficient that relates internal friction stresses to thespatial derivatives of the velocity field is replaced by a nine-elementviscous stress tensor.
There is general formula for friction force in a liquid: The vectordifferential of friction force is equal the viscosity tensor increased onvector product differential of the area vector of adjoining a liquid layers androtor of velocity:where is the viscositytensor. The diagonal components of viscosity tensor is molecular viscosity of a liquid, and not diagonal components –turbulence eddy viscosity.[14]
The following equation illustrates the relation between shear rate and shear stressfor a fluid with laminar flow only in the direction x:where:
If viscosity does not vary with rate of deformation the fluid is Newtonian.

The power law model is used to display the behavior of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids and measures shear stress as a function of strain rate.
The relationship between shear stress, strain rate and the velocity gradient for the power law model are:where
If
The relationship between the shear stress and shear rate in a casson fluid model is defined as follows:whereτ0 is the yield stress andwhereα depends on protein composition andH is theHematocrit number.
Water,air,alcohol,glycerol, and thin motor oil are all examples of Newtonian fluids over the range of shear stresses and shear rates encountered in everyday life. Single-phase fluids made up of small molecules are generally (although not exclusively) Newtonian.