Can Obstacles Enhance the Speed of Incompressible Fluid Flow?

[Loren Booda]

I believe I heard somewhat of the following thesis on TV:

Take a constant and homogeneous fluid flow, introduce an obstacle, and you can find at least one path connecting original endpoints that is quicker than without the obstacle. Might this be so?

 

[Kittel Knight]

If you keep the flow rate, I don't known how it could be different...

 

[Gokul43201]

I believe I heard somewhat of the following thesis on TV:

Take a constant and homogeneous fluid flow, introduce an obstacle, and you can find at least one path connecting original endpoints that is quicker than without the obstacle. Might this be so?

What are the constraints? Constant flow rate, constant head between endpoints...?

Also, when you say "path", do you really mean "streamline"? There's a big difference between the two, and only the latter makes any sense to me.

 

[Loren Booda]

Gokul43201,

I overlooked mentioning that the fluid was incompressible, and approached a constant velocity toward infinity.

"Constant head between endpoints"[?] does not show up on Google except for this thread.

Streamline it is, not path. Thanks for the correction.