Shock diamonds also known as Mach diamonds, are a formation of standing wave patterns that appears in the supersonic exhaust plume of an aerospace propulsion system, such as a supersonic jet engine, rocket, ramjet, or scramjet, when it is operated in an atmosphere.
The diamonds are formed from a complex flow field and are visible due to the abrupt changes in local density and pressure caused by standing shock waves. Mach diamonds (or disks) are named after Ernst Mach, the physicist who first described them.
Article:
http://www.universetoday.com/94123/those-rings-in-rocket-exhaust-are-shock-diamonds/
Read & Learn:
http://functionspace.com/topic/3952/What-causes-shock-diamonds-
Who was Ernst Mach?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ernst-mach/
#physics #shockdiamonds #ernstmach
Good examples often seen in the MIG-23 and F-14
ReplyDeleteI've been regretting for years a photocopy from a book, with the same flow imaged both with a short exposure time that revealed widespread turbulence, and with a long exposure that showed the averaged flow to have a perfectly, geometrically regular pattern of this sort.
ReplyDelete