Talk:Shell balance

Is this notable enough?

This article seems to describe a particular mathematical technique, but I wonder if it's notable enough to warrant an entry here. The technique is essentially just applying conservation of momentum to a thin slab, with various assumptions about the form of the flow and viscous stresses. The underlying ideas are much the same as in the more general method used to derive the Navier-Stokes equations from first principles. More importantly, the applicability of this technique would appear to be rather limited to simple flows, and requires assumptions to be made about the form of the flow. If you actually want to solve such a problem, you'd be much better off starting with the Navier-Stokes equations, and applying the assumptions to them, and solving the resulting ODE subject to the appropriate boundary conditions.

If it is to be kept it certainly needs a diagram, and some wikilinks to other articles. I would still worry that it concentrates more on a specific example, rather than on the general principle. But since the general principle is just conservation of momentum, perhaps a section in Momentum#Conservation_of_momentum for Fluid Mechanics (which could then mention NS equations, and other applications) would be more appropriate.

-- Rjw62 21:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)