Shock waves and the Mach cone around a body. Watch pressure waves bunch up as Mach number rises, an oblique shock spring off a wedge, and a bow shock stand ahead of a blunt body.
Presets
Controls
Stats
Mach number—
Regime—
Mach angle μ—
Shock angle β—
p₂/p₁—
ρ₂/ρ₁—
Downstream M₂—
The physics. Below Mach 1 pressure waves outrun the body and the flow stays smooth. At M = 1 they pile up at the nose. Above Mach 1 they collapse into a Mach cone with half-angle μ = arcsin(1/M). A sharp wedge turning the flow by θ forms an oblique shock at angle β, found from the θ-β-M relation. A blunt body cannot turn the flow sharply, so a detached bow shock stands ahead of it. Across the (normal component of the) shock, pressure, density and temperature jump per the Rankine-Hugoniot relations while the flow decelerates to M₂.