 Hi everyone, I am Rinku Mukherjee from IIT Madras and I'm going to be offering the course entitled Introduction to Boundary Layers starting January 2016. A little bit about the course, it's a 20-hour lecture. It's primarily intended for students of aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, physics and slightly for senior level students, third or fourth year undergrad students and masters and PhD students. And what one would require to really understand the portions that will be covered in this course is basic fundamental knowledge of fluid mechanics. I will however do a brief overview of the basic fundamentals of fluid mechanics before I get into the details of boundary layers. So, what exactly is so special about boundary layers? Why should you be taking this course? Well, the applications of this of boundary layer theory so to speak is plenty, right airspace applications, nuclear reactors, flows and conveyors, emission of pollutants in the refineries, handling of materials, flow through nozzles, diffusers, flow past wings, airfoils, flows at high angles of attack, so on and so forth. For example, even metal casting, you know many cast steel rods. So, applications of boundary layers are plenty, ok. And I think it is important that before once one sort of sets into a career that you have at least a basic knowledge of boundary layers and at least know what boundary layers are all about. So, the way we will go about this course is like I said we will begin with a review of the basic fundamentals of the fluid mechanics. We will then really spend some time on the concepts involved in boundary layers. What exactly is a boundary layer? There are things like boundary layer thickness, boundary layer displacement thickness, boundary layer momentum thickness, skin friction coefficient, boundary layer separation, so on and so forth. So, first of all, we are going to sort of touch upon all of those things and really understand the concepts behind all of this. And next step will be to do the math so that we can get a quantitative measure of what all these things mean, right. So, if I say there is a boundary layer, then the question would be well how thick is it or how is it located, where is it located and is it going to cause any what kind of effect does it have on the flow that I am looking at. So, those are the type of questions that we will be looking to answer, right. So, if you for example, if you say I have a flow which is going through pipes, right. Will we have a boundary layer there? If we do then what is the effect of the boundary layer, ok. So, those are the type of questions we will be trying to answer. The postulate of boundary layer theory which is one of highly respected you know genius of a scientist which is Ludwig Prandtl really came up with the boundary layer theory like I said. So, what we will do is go step by step and look into the derivation of the Prandtl's boundary layer theory, ok. And in order to understand his thought process and in order to understand that what exactly went through his mind when he postulated the boundary layer theorem, ok. And then we will use this to apply to a flat plate and to other bodies which are other than the flat plate. We will also we will look at in a boundary layer separation. We hear a lot about boundary layer separation every time a student comes here she talks about boundary layers and the next thing you hear is boundary layer separation. So, we will talk about boundary layer separation as well with and without pressure gradient. And we will also talk about something called a thermal boundary layer. Some of you might be aware of that. So, we will talk about that in little detail and how the energy equation comes into play, right. And finally, we will wind it up by talking about Prandtl number dissipation in thermal boundary layers. So, I would hope that by the end of this course one for example, say I have you know a flat plate. For example, I have a flat plate like this, right. And say I have a flow which is coming from this, right and this is impinging on to this flat plate. So, the questions I would like to ask is that you know if so how does the boundary layer develop on a flat plate like this? Does how does it look if I go along this edge of the plate? How does it look if I go along this edge of the plate? And how does it look if I go away from the plate, right. So, say this is say you know 1 meter length, right. So, if I were to go from here to half the length, right. What would be the thickness of the boundary layer in this direction? What would how would the boundary layer look like if I were to travel this way along the plane, right and along this plane. And what kind of effect would that have, right on the flow itself, ok. So, by the end of this course hopefully we shall have a conceptual understanding of what exactly we are talking about in terms of a boundary layers. And also we will be able to do the math with which we can quantify the effect of the boundary layer. So, hope to see you there and hope we will have fun learning things about the boundary layers. Thank you.