A study of transonic flow around spheres

Abstract

The paper presents a new analytical and experimental study of transonic flow around spheres. The results of the analytical study, which employs the method of orthogonal collocation for simultaneous solution of the momentum equations, the equation of continuity and the energy equation, are compared with hitherto unpublished measurements obtained on spheres of various sizes (1·02, 2·54 and 3·81 cm in diameter) in air, in dry steam and in wet steam with free-stream Mach numbers in the transonic range (0·58 <M∞< 0·97). The relationship θh= 91·78 + 8·59M∞between the attached-shock angle and the free-stream Mach number was obtained by fitting the theoretical pressure distributions to the experimental ones.