sound barrier
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Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- wavefront
Show 3 more facts
- Commons category
- Sonic boom
- Commons gallery
- Sound barrier
- different from
- Wall of Sound
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Encyclopedic overview
U.S. Navy F/A-18 transonic pushing into the sound barrier. The supersonic white cloud is formed by decreased air pressure and temperature around the tail of the aircraft (see Prandtl–Glauert singularity). Subsonic Mach 1 Supersonic Shock wave
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. The term sound barrier is still sometimes used today to refer to aircraft approaching supersonic flight in this high drag regime. Flying faster than sound produces a sonic boom.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “sound barrier” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.