Supersonic - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Supersonic speed is a rate of travel of an object that exceeds the speed of sound

Speed of sound

The speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at , the speed of sound is . This is , or about one kilometer in three seconds or approximately one mile in five seconds....

(Mach

Mach number

Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...

1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) this speed is approximately 343 m/s

Metre per second

Metre per second is an SI derived unit of both speed and velocity , defined by distance in metres divided by time in seconds....

, 1,125 ft/s

Feet per second

The foot per second is a unit of both speed and velocity . It expresses the distance in feet traveled or displaced, divided by the time in seconds...

, 768 mph

Miles per hour

Miles per hour is an imperial unit of speed expressing the number of statute miles covered in one hour. It is currently the standard unit used for speed limits, and to express speeds generally, on roads in the United Kingdom and the United States. It is also often used to express the speed of...

or 1,235 km/h. Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) are often referred to as hypersonic

Hypersonic

In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that is highly supersonic. Since the 1970s, the term has generally been assumed to refer to speeds of Mach 5 and above...

. Flight during which only some parts of the air around an object, such as the ends of rotor blades, reach supersonic speeds are called transonic

Transonic

Transonic speed is an aeronautics term referring to the condition of flight in which a range of velocities of airflow exist surrounding and flowing past an air vehicle or an airfoil that are concurrently below, at, and above the speed of sound in the range of Mach 0.8 to 1.2, i.e. 600–900 mph...

. This occurs typically somewhere between Mach 0.8 and Mach 1.2.

Sounds are traveling vibrations in the form of pressure waves in an elastic medium. In gases, sound travels longitudinally at different speeds, mostly depending on the molecular mass

Molecular mass

The molecular mass of a substance is the mass of one molecule of that substance, in unified atomic mass unit u...

and temperature

Temperature

Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...

of the gas, and pressure

Pressure

Pressure is the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object. Gauge pressure is the pressure relative to the local atmospheric or ambient pressure.- Definition :...

has little effect. Since air temperature and composition varies significantly with altitude, Mach number

Mach number

s for aircraft may change despite a constant travel speed. In water at room temperature

Room temperature

-Comfort levels:The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers has listings for suggested temperatures and air flow rates in different types of buildings and different environmental circumstances. For example, a single office in a building has an occupancy ratio per...

supersonic speed can be considered as any speed greater than 1,440 m/s (4,724 ft/s). In solids, sound waves can be polarized longitudinally or transversely and have even higher velocities.

Supersonic fracture

Supersonic fracture

Supersonic fractures are fractures where the fracture velocity moves faster than the speed of sound in the material. This phenomenon was first discovered by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart and IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California Supersonic...

is crack motion faster than the speed of sound in a brittle

Brittle

A material is brittle if, when subjected to stress, it breaks without significant deformation . Brittle materials absorb relatively little energy prior to fracture, even those of high strength. Breaking is often accompanied by a snapping sound. Brittle materials include most ceramics and glasses ...

material.

Supersonic objects

Most modern fighter aircraft

Fighter aircraft

A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...

are supersonic, but there have been supersonic passenger aircraft

Supersonic transport

A supersonic transport is a civilian supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. The only SSTs to see regular service to date have been Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144. The last passenger flight of the Tu-144 was in June 1978 with its last ever...

, namely Concorde

Concorde

Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...

and the Tupolev Tu-144

Tupolev Tu-144

The Tupolev Tu-144 was a Soviet supersonic transport aircraft and remains one of only two SSTs to enter commercial service, the other being the Concorde...

. Both these passenger aircraft

Aircraft

An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...

and some modern fighters are also capable of supercruise

Supercruise

Supercruise is sustained supersonic flight of an aircraft with a useful cargo, passenger, or weapons load performed efficiently and without the use of afterburners ....

, a condition of sustained supersonic flight without the use of an afterburner

AfterBurner

The AfterBurner is a lighting solution for the Game Boy Advance system that was created by Triton-Labs.Originally, portablemonopoly.net was a website created to petition Nintendo to put some kind of light in their Game Boy Advance system...

. Due to its ability to supercruise for several hours and the relatively high frequency of flight over several decades, Concorde spent more time flying supersonically than all other aircraft combined by a considerable margin. Since Concorde's final retirement flight on November 26, 2003, there are no supersonic passenger aircraft left in service. Some large bombers, such as the Tupolev

Tupolev

Tupolev is a Russian aerospace and defence company, headquartered in Basmanny District, Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. Known officially as Public Stock Company Tupolev, it is the successor of the Tupolev OKB or Tupolev Design Bureau headed by the Soviet aerospace engineer A.N. Tupolev...

Tu-160 and Rockwell

Rockwell International

Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate in the latter half of the 20th century, involved in aircraft, the space industry, both defense-oriented and commercial electronics, automotive and truck components, printing presses, valves and meters, and industrial automation....

/Boeing

Boeing

The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...

B-1B are also supersonic-capable.

Most modern firearm

Firearm

A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...

bullets are supersonic, with rifle projectiles often travelling at speeds approaching and in some cases well exceeding Mach 3.

Most spacecraft

Spacecraft

A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....

, most notably the Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...

are supersonic at least during portions of their reentry, though the effects on the spacecraft are reduced by low air pressures. During ascent, launch vehicles generally avoid going supersonic below 30 km (~98,400 feet) to reduce air drag.

Note that the speed of sound decreases somewhat with altitude, due to lower temperatures found there (typically up to 25 km). At even higher altitudes the temperature starts increasing, with the corresponding increase in the speed of sound.

A wave

Wave

In physics, a wave is a disturbance that travels through space and time, accompanied by the transfer of energy.Waves travel and the wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium—that is, with little or no associated mass...

traveling through a bull whip is also capable of achieving supersonic speeds.

Supersonic flight

Supersonic aerodynamics

Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...

are simpler than subsonic because the airsheets at different points along the plane often can't affect each other. Supersonic jets and rocket vehicles require several times greater thrust to push through the extra drag experienced within the transonic

Transonic

region (around Mach 0.85–1.2). At these speeds aerospace engineers can gently guide air around the fuselage

Fuselage

The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...

of the aircraft without producing new shock wave

Shock wave

A shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...

s but any change in cross sectional area further down the vehicle leads to shock waves along the body. Designers use the Supersonic area rule and the Whitcomb area rule to minimize sudden changes in size.

However, in practical applications, a supersonic aircraft will have to operate stably in both subsonic and supersonic profiles, hence aerodynamic design is more complex.

One problem with sustained supersonic flight is the generation of heat in flight. At high speeds aerodynamic heating

Aerodynamic heating

Aerodynamic heating is the heating of a solid body produced by the passage of fluid over a body such as a meteor, missile, or airplane. It is a form of forced convection in that the flow field is created by forces beyond those associated with the thermal processes...

can occur, so an aircraft must be designed to operate and function under very high temperatures. Duralumin

Duralumin

Duralumin is the trade name of one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The main alloying constituents are copper, manganese, and magnesium. A commonly used modern equivalent of this alloy type is AA2024, which contains 4.4% copper, 1.5% magnesium, 0.6% manganese and 93.5%...

, the traditional aircraft material, starts to lose strength and go into plastic deformation at relatively low temperatures, and is unsuitable for continuous use at speeds above Mach 2.2 to 2.4. Materials such as titanium

Titanium

Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It has a low density and is a strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal with a silver color....

and stainless steel

Stainless steel

In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....

allow operations at much higher temperatures. For example, the SR-71 Blackbird

SR-71 Blackbird

The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the...

jet could fly continuously at Mach 3.1 while some parts were above 315°C (600°F).

Another area of concern for continued high-speed operation is the engines. Jet engines create thrust by increasing the temperature of the air they ingest, and as the aircraft speeds up, friction and compression heats this air before it reaches the engines. The maximum temperature of the exhaust is determined by the materials in the turbine

Turbine

A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...

at the rear of the engine, so as the aircraft speeds up the difference in intake and exhaust temperature the engine can extract decreases, and the thrust along with it. Air cooling the turbine area to allow operations at higher temperatures was a key solution, one that continued to improve through the 1950s and on to this day.

Intake design was also a major issue. Normal jet engines can only ingest subsonic air, so for supersonic operation the air has to be slowed down. Ramps or cones in the intake are used to create shock wave

Shock wave

s that slows the airflow before it reaches the engine. Doing so removes energy from the airflow, causing drag. The key to reducing this drag is to use multiple small oblique shock waves, but this was difficult because the angle they make inside the intake changes with Mach number. In order to efficiently operate across a range of speeds, the shock waves have to be "tuned."

An aircraft able to operate for extended periods at supersonic speeds

Supercruise

Supercruise is sustained supersonic flight of an aircraft with a useful cargo, passenger, or weapons load performed efficiently and without the use of afterburners ....

has a potential range advantage over a similar design operating subsonically. Most of the drag an aircraft sees while speeding up to supersonic speeds occurs just below the speed of sound, due to an aerodynamic effect known as wave drag

Wave drag

In aeronautics, wave drag is a component of the drag on aircraft, blade tips and projectiles moving at transonic and supersonic speeds, due to the presence of shock waves. Wave drag is independent of viscous effects.- Overview :...

. An aircraft that can accelerate past this speed sees a significant drag decrease, and can fly supersonically with improved fuel economy. However, due to the way lift is generated supersonically, the lift-to-drag ratio

Lift-to-drag ratio

In aerodynamics, the lift-to-drag ratio, or L/D ratio, is the amount of lift generated by a wing or vehicle, divided by the drag it creates by moving through the air...

of the aircraft as a whole drops, leading to lower range, offsetting or overturning this advantage.

The key to having low supersonic drag is to properly shape the overall aircraft to be long and skinny, and close to a "perfect" shape, the von Karman ogive or Sears-Haack body

Sears-Haack body

The Sears–Haack body is the aerodynamic body shape with the lowest theoretical wave drag. Aircraft designed to operate at high subsonic or supersonic speeds have their cross-sectional areas designed to match as closely as possible the proportions of Sears-Haack body.By Whitcomb's area rule, the...

. This has led to almost every supersonic cruising aircraft looking very similar to every other, with a very long and skinny fuselage and large delta wings, cf. SR-71

SR-71 Blackbird

, Concorde

Concorde

, etc. Although not ideal for passenger aircraft, this shaping is quite adaptable for bomber use.

History of supersonic flight

Heavy research into aircraft technics during World War II led to the creation of the first rocket and jet aircraft. Subsequently the first claims of breaking the sound barrier were made during the war. However, the first recognized flight exceeding the speed of sound for the first time by a manned aircraft in controlled level flight was on October 14, 1947 in an American research project, using the experimental Bell X-1 research rocket plane, piloted by Charles "Chuck" Yeager

Chuck Yeager

Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He was the first pilot to travel faster than sound...

. The first production plane to break the sound barrier was an F-86 Canadair Sabre with the first 'supersonic' woman pilot, Jacqueline Cochran

Jacqueline Cochran

Jacqueline Cochran was a pioneer American aviator, considered to be one of the most gifted racing pilots of her generation...

, at the controls, although this aircraft was not designed with regular supersonic flights in mind.

External links

"Can We Ever Fly Faster Speed of Sound", October 1944, Popular Science one of the earliest articles on shock waves and flying the speed of sound
"Britain Goes Supersonice", January 1946, Popular Science 1946 article trying to explain supersonic flight to the general public
MathPages - The Speed of Sound
Sound
Supersonic sound pressure levels

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Supersonic objects

Supersonic flight

History of supersonic flight

See also

External links