I was recently watching this vox video and BBC documentary on the Concorde and supersonic travel. The fluid dynamics of air at mach speeds greater than 1 is a fascinating subject on its own accord.
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Stagnation enthalpy
- Stagnation enthalpy is defined as the ‘Enthalpy of a fluid when it is brought to rest from velocity v isentropically’. Stagnation properties such as Stagnation enthalphy, pressure, temperature are often used to quantify the fast moving air around a flight moving at supersonic speeds.
- “For very low Mach numbers, the density of the air is a constant. But as the Mach number increases into the supersonic regime, some of the energy associated with the motion of the object compresses the gas and changes the density from its static value….. As the Mach number increases into the low hypersonic regime, some of the energy of the flow excites the vibrational modes of the diatomic molecules.”
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How to photograph shock waves ?
- Souce: NASA Armstrong
- Imaging shock waves in a laboratory can be achieved through specialized tools, but NASA regularly posts images of shock waves around jets flying way up in the sky. How does one begin to visualize shock waves from an around an aircraft at several thousands of feet in the air. This post runs through a few techniques that are commonly employed
- Vapor cones and condensation
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- Slowing down to Transonic speeds, a visible cloud of condensed water form around a fast moving aircraft or object known as a ‘vapor cone’.