The frictional resistance of a rotating disc in a uniform stream is computed by the variational method. The functionals of the velocity distribution are chosen in such a way that their stationary values give the radial or the peripheral component of the shearing stress on the surface of the disc, and the conditions for the stationary values of the functionals coincide with the equations of motion. We solve these variational problems by Ritz's method, and get the coefficient of the resisting moment c
m and the radial component of the shearing stress τ
r as function of the ratio of the radial to the peripheral velocity. As the results of calculation in the particular cases, we get [numerical formula] for the case of the rotation of the disc alone, and [numerical formula] for the case of the uniform stream alone, where ρ is the density of the fluid, ν the kinematic coefficient of viscosity, ω the angular velocity of the disc, R the radius of the disc, γ the radial distance from the axis of rotation and U the radial component of the potential flow.
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