Ian
priscilla 1Planes Breaking The Sound Barrier
December 17th 2010 02:10
F/A-18F Super Hornet
In aerodynamics, the sound barrier refers to the point at which an aircraft moves from transonic to supersonic speed. (This is about 1,250 kilometres per hour or 770 mph, the point at which the aircraft is travelling at the same speed as the sound it's producing) The term came into use during World War II when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of compressibility, a collection of several unrelated aerodynamic effects. By the 1950s, new aircraft designs started to routinely "break" the sound barrier.
F-16 Fighting Falcon
The white halo (vapor cone) formed by condensed water droplets is thought to result from a drop in air pressure around the aircraft at transonic speeds.
F-22 Raptor
F-22
When an object passes through the air, it creates a series of pressure waves in front of it and behind it, similar to the bow and stern waves created by a boat. These waves travel at the speed of sound, and as the speed of the object increases, the waves are forced together, or compressed, because they cannot "get out of the way" of each other, eventually merging into a single shock wave at the speed of sound.
F-18
*Images source.
*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia pages for Sonic Boom and Sound Barrier.
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