A Simpler Eulerian Variational Principle for Barotropic Fluids

Abstract

The variational principle of barotropic Eulerian fluid dynamics is known to be quite cumbersome containing as much as eleven independent functions. This is much more than the the four functions (density and velocity) appearing in the Eulerian equations of motion. This fact may have discouraged applications of the variational method. In this paper a four function Eulerian variational principle is suggested and the implications are discussed briefly.