Number and Speed of Sound

Mach Number and Speed of Sound The Mach number M = V/c is the ratio of fluid velocity, V, to the speed of sound or acoustic velocity, c. The speed of sound is the propagation velocity of infinitesimal pressure disturbances and is derived from a momentum balance. The compression caused by the pressure wave is adiabatic and frictionless, and therefore isentropic. 

The derivative of pressure p with respect to density p is taken at constant entropy s. For an ideal gas, 

Most often, the Mach number is calculated using the speed of sound evaluated at the local pressure and temperature. When M = 1, the flow is critical or sonic and the velocity equals the local speed of sound. For subsonic flow M 1 while supersonic flows have M 1. Compressibility effects are important when the Mach number exceeds 0.1 to 0.2. A common error is to assume that compressibility effects are always negligible when the Mach number is small. The proper assessment of whether compressibility is important should be based on relative density changes, not on Mach number. 

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Maeh Number and Speed of Sound The Maeh number M =... 

Compressible Vlow. The flow of easily compressible fluids, ie, gases, exhibits features not evident in the flow of substantially incompressible fluid, ie, Hquids. These differences arise because of the ease with which gas velocities can be brought to or beyond the speed of sound and the substantial reversible exchange possible between kinetic energy and internal energy. The Mach number, the ratio of the gas velocity to the local speed of sound, plays a central role in describing such flows. 

There are certain limitations on the range of usefulness of pitot tubes. With gases, the differential is very small at low velocities e.g., at 4.6 m/s (15.1 ft/s) the differential is only about 1.30 mm (0.051 in) of water (20°C) for air at 1 atm (20°C), which represents a lower hmit for 1 percent error even when one uses a micromanometer with a precision of 0.0254 mm (0.001 in) of water. Equation does not apply for Mach numbers greater than 0.7 because of the interference of shock waves. For supersonic flow, local Mac-h numbers can be calculated from a knowledge of the dynamic and true static pressures. The free stream Mach number (MJ) is defined as the ratio of the speed of the stream (V ) to the speed of sound in the free stream ... 

A detonation shock wave is an abrupt gas dynamic discontinuity across which properties such as gas pressure, density, temperature, and local flow velocities change discontinnonsly. Shockwaves are always characterized by the observation that the wave travels with a velocity that is faster than the local speed of sound in the undisturbed mixtnre ahead of the wave front. The ratio of the wave velocity to the speed of sound is called the Mach number. 

Fluid flow and reaction engineering problems represent a rich spectrum of examples of multiple and disparate scales. In chemical kinetics such problems involve high values of Thiele modulus (diffusion-reaction problems), Damkohler and Peclet numbers (diffusion-convection-reaction problems). For fluid flow problems a large value of the Mach number, which represents the ratio of flow velocity to the speed of sound, indicates the possibility of shock waves a large value of the Reynolds number causes boundary layers to be formed near solid walls and a large value of the Prandtl number gives rise to thermal boundary layers. Evidently, the inherently disparate scales for fluid flow, heat transfer and chemical reaction are responsible for the presence of thin regions or "fronts in the solution. 

As will be outlined below, the computation of compressible flow is significantly more challenging than the corresponding problem for incompressible flow. In order to reduce the computational effort, within a CED model a fluid medium should be treated as incompressible whenever possible. A rule of thumb often found in the literature and used as a criterion for the incompressibility assumption to be valid is based on the Mach number of the flow. The Mach number is defined as the ratio of the local flow velocity and the speed of sound. The rule states that if the Mach number is below 0.3 in the whole flow domain, the flow may be treated as incompressible [84], In practice, this rule has to be supplemented by a few additional criteria [3], Especially for micro flows it is important to consider also the total pressure drop as a criterion for incompressibility. In a long micro channel the Mach number may be well below 0.3, but owing to the small hydraulic diameter of the channel a large pressure drop may be obtained. A pressure drop of a few atmospheres for a gas flow clearly indicates that compressibility effects should be taken into account. 

For N2 molecules in the air at room temperature cr(d is of the order of the speed of sound, 370 ms-1, a is 0.43 nm2 and Z = 5 x 1028 cm-3 s 1. This is a very large number, which means that collisions between molecules occur very frequently and the energy can be averaged between them, ensuring the concept of local thermal equilibrium. Each molecule collides ZAK/NA times per second, which is about 5 x 109 s x once every 0.2 ns. However, in the diffuse ISM where the molecule density is of order 102 cm3 the collision frequency is 5 x 10-8 s-1 or a collision every 1.5 years. 

Time resolution of the enthalpy changes is often possible and depends on a number of experimental parameters, such as the characteristics of the transducer (oscillation frequency and relaxation time) and the acoustic transit time of the system, za, which can be defined by ra = r0/ua where r0 is the radius of the irradiated sample, and va is the speed of sound in the liquid. The observed voltage response of the transducer, V (t) is given by the convolution of the time-dependent heat source, H (t) and the instrument response function,... 

Kieffer has estimated the heat capacity of a large number of minerals from readily available data [8], The model, which may be used for many kinds of materials, consists of three parts. There are three acoustic branches whose maximum cut-off frequencies are determined from speed of sound data or from elastic constants. The corresponding heat capacity contributions are calculated using a modified Debye model where dispersion is taken into account. High-frequency optic modes are determined from specific localized internal vibrations (Si-O, C-0 and O-H stretches in different groups of atoms) as observed by IR and Raman spectroscopy. The heat capacity contributions are here calculated using the Einstein model. The remaining modes are ascribed to an optic continuum, where the density of states is constant in an interval from vl to vp and where the frequency limits Vy and Vp are estimated from Raman and IR spectra. 

Elsewhere in this book attention is focused on particles whose Mach and Knudsen numbers are small. The Mach number is defined as the ratio of the relative velocity between the particle and the fluid to the speed of sound in the fluid ... 

The incompressible flow assumption is most always accurate for water in environmental applications and is often a good assumption for air. Air flow is close to incompressible as long as the Mach number (flow velocity/speed of sound) is below 0.3. A Mach number of 0.3 corresponds to an air flow velocity of approximately 100 m/s. 

Shock waves can be produced in a number of ways, such as movement of projectiles or other objects thru air at supersonic speeds, or pushing out of the air by the products of a detonation, which expand at many times the speed of sound. The latter type of shock wave is much stronger and is known as a blast wave (See under BLAST EFFECTS IN AIR, EARTH AND WATER in Vol 2 of Encycl, pp B180 to B184)... 

The speed of sound comes out to be about 750 miles per hour. This is a bit over the speed you usually see quoted. The textbooks say that the speed of sound is actually 1,088 feet per second at 32° F. I rounded the number up to 1,100 feet for ease in computation and assumed that the temperature during a thunderstorm would be a bit warmer than 32°F. 

We recall that c is the velocity of the molecules. The index on v means that we calculate the number of collisions necessary for reaction in the part of the zone where the reaction rate is highest and conditions are most conducive, so that i/min is the minimum value of v. Finally, tp is a dimensionless quantity of order (but less than) unity, algebraically (but not exponentially) dependent on the reaction mechanism, the activation heat, the temperatures T0 and TB, and the reagent concentrations. From the formula it is obvious first of all that u is always many times smaller than c, and less than the speed of sound. This fact will be important for the theory of detonation (Part II). 

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