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The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. More simply, the speed of sound is how fast vibrations travel. At 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound in air, is about 343 m/s (1,125 ft/s; 1,235 km/h; 767 mph; 667 kn), or 1 km in 2.91 s or one mile in 4.69 s.
The sound barrier or sonic barrier is the large increase in aerodynamic drag and other undesirable effects experienced by an aircraft or other object when it approaches the speed of sound. When aircraft first approached the speed of sound, these effects were seen as constituting a barrier, making faster speeds very difficult or impossible.
At Mach 0.65, u is 65% of the speed of sound (subsonic), and, at Mach 1.35, u is 35% faster than the speed of sound (supersonic). An F/A-18 Hornet creating a vapor cone at transonic speed just before reaching the speed of sound. The local speed of sound, and hence the Mach number, depends on the temperature of the surrounding gas.
Transonic flow patterns on an aircraft wing, showing the effects at and above the critical Mach number. In aerodynamics, the critical Mach number (Mcr or M*) of an aircraft is the lowest Mach number at which the airflow over some point of the aircraft reaches the speed of sound, but does not exceed it. [1]
The speed of sound depends on the medium the waves pass through, and is a fundamental property of the material. The first significant effort towards measurement of the speed of sound was made by Isaac Newton. He believed the speed of sound in a particular substance was equal to the square root of the pressure acting on it divided by its density:
In acoustics, Stokes's law of sound attenuation is a formula for the attenuation of sound in a Newtonian fluid, such as water or air, due to the fluid's viscosity.It states that the amplitude of a plane wave decreases exponentially with distance traveled, at a rate α given by = where η is the dynamic viscosity coefficient of the fluid, ω is the sound's angular frequency, ρ is the fluid ...
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Transonic (or transsonic) flow is air flowing around an object at a speed that generates regions of both subsonic and supersonic airflow around that object. [1] The exact range of speeds depends on the object's critical Mach number, but transonic flow is seen at flight speeds close to the speed of sound (343 m/s at sea level), typically between Mach 0.8 and 1.2.