The Fluid Mechanics is a very complex matter that requires the treatment of multiple skills. For the advancement of knowledge it is therefore necessary that material and human conditions exist for the exchange of experiences and practices. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) has as intrinsic characteristic a high quality in its undergraduate and postgraduate courses, with indistinct emphasis on the basic areas and for the engineering.

Recently, the enormous advances of certain sectors of the Brazilian economy have put a great deal of pressure on the professional market for the formation of human resources and the generation of specific knowledge in topics related to fluid mechanics. Demands from the oil, aeronautics, chemistry, water resource, nanotechnology and environmental science industries have required an increasingly advanced qualification of existing professionals as well as facilities dedicated to elucidating the problems arising from these applications.

In certain areas, in particular, this demand becomes critical. Typical examples are problems related to artificial elevation of multiphase flows and flows around slender or blunt geometries.

The present initiative, as described above, establishes a knowledge center capable of providing an effective response to all these concerns. Therefore, the NIDF – Interdisciplinary Center of Fluid Dynamics establishes a research center that has sufficient competence to solve the problems generated by the industrial demand, besides ensuring the conduction of its subjects at a level high enough to generate original knowledge and to form highly qualified personnel

The study of dynamic nonlinear systems has a great prominence in the natural sciences; they are at the heart of many important problems, in particular, in the flow of fluids. The Navier-Stokes equations, we know, have infinite dimensions, dimensions that represent the number of parameters needed to describe the configuration of a system at a given time point. As opposed to linear systems, nonlinear systems obey complicated laws that can not be obtained by intuition alone or elementary arguments.

The mathematical problem of studying the behavior of complex flows for wide intervals of time has kept researchers very busy for the last thirty years. From the engineering point of view, solutions must be obtained at much shorter timescales. To this end, frequently professionals resort to ad hoc procedures that must therefore be developed from extensive experimental campaigns along with many constructivist, dimensional, and asymptotic arguments. The availability of physical facilities capable of enabling this sophisticated formulation of the fluid phenomena is crucial for a good term of research and development. The general justification for the construction of high-level laboratory facilities is therefore clearly stated.

Another extremely relevant point concerns the high cost for the acquisition of scientific instrumentation for the dynamic measurement of flows. With the agglomeration of all the apparatuses in a single laboratory it avoids the duplication of instrumentation, thus being able to operate in a much more efficient way. From the point of view of the generation of original scientific knowledge, the present proposal has the relevance of establishing a reference center for the mediation of properties of the flow dynamics that will serve as a central pole for the modeling of flows of practical interest. From the point of view of the relevance of the generation of technological knowledge and innovation, the present proposal makes possible future actions with the specific intention of developing instrumentation for the mediation of the dynamic properties of flows based on thermal velocimetry (VT), laser doppler velocimetry (VLD) and particle image velocimetry (VIP). The meeting of mechanical, electrical / electronic and physical engineers under one umbrella was used to seek the construction of: 

1) hot-wire anemometers with fully digital control of their operation, 

2) a low-power, portable miniVLD system,

3) VIP system based on the computing platform MathematicaTM. 

All systems designed have innovative design. Parallel to the development of instruments, a major effort was made in the area of scientific programming for the development of complete multiphase systems simulators (applications in the nuclear and oil industries).

It should also be emphasized that the NIDF, as a compound, is genuine. All involved researchers are diligent in fluid mechanics. Some make this activity almost their exclusive research activity.

Additionally, we can highlight the following relevant subsequent actions that will be fulfilled as a consequence of the installation of the NIDF:

• The construction of facilities for the accommodation of existing experimental apparatus and instruments that guarantee their operation in desirable conditions (consolidation of air applications);

• The construction of two new experimental apparatus: a water canal and a circuit for multiphase flows (expansion for water applications);

• The acquisition of new measuring instruments (rise to the state of the art); 

• The construction of new measuring instruments (obtaining the technological domain) (PIV, MiniLDV);

• The consolidation of transversal actions with emphasis on the formation of human resources with multidisciplinary characteristics.