REPORT No.

247

PRESSURE OF AIR ON COMING TO REST

FROM VARIOUS SPEEDS

By A. F. ZAHM
Aerodynamicai Laboratory, Bureau of Construction and Repair, United States Navy

.—
4-N
 REPORTNo. 247

PRESSURE OF AIR ON COMING TO REST FROM VARIOUS SPEEDS

SUMM.4RY

The text gives t.heoreticaI formuIas from which is computed a table for the pressure of air
on coming to rest. from various speeds, such as those of aircraf~ and propelIer blades. Pressure
graphs are given for speeds from 1 cm. sec. up to those of swift projectiles.
The present treatment, slightly modified, was prepared for the Bureau of Aeronautics,
Na~ Department, February 17, 19.26, and by it. vias submitted for publication to the National
.Ad-msory Committee for Aeronautics.

PRESSURE-SPEED FORMULAS FOR MODERATE SPEEDS

A solid surface in uniform translation through a frictionIess incompressible fluid, otherwise

quiescent, can thereby recei~e at one point or more a maximum pressure increase P. ??02[%’,
where pa is the fluid density, To the body’s speed. One calls POV’02J’2the “full impwh” or
CCstop” pressure; and any point where it occurs a ‘Cstaa.gation point” or ‘(stop poinh.” Like-
wise if the body is fixed in a uniform s&ream, of speed To, the incompressible fluid comes to rest
at a stop point with the pressure increase POVG2/2. Here the whole stop pressure above ~acuo is

pl=Po-?-Po V02R (1)

if pa is the pressure iu the unchecked part of the stream. In every case here treated pOis assumed
void of gravity effect.
When a gas for which p/pO= (P/Po) Y comes to rest adiabatically the stop pressure is

as shown in hydrodynamics, Y= GP/Co being the ratio of the specific heat at constant pressure
to that at constant volume. This formula is -ralid for engineering speeds beIo-w that of sound
in the fluid; for higher and for extremely low speeds other fern-das wilI be given presentIy.

Expanding (2) gives

p,g V02
P2=PO+POV0’R+PO ~+ – – –
( )

which exceeds (1) by the parenthetical factor. This excess is negligible at su.fEciently low
speeds; but not at the speed of a fast. airpkme or propeller blade, as presently will be shown
b> some examples.
To furnkh the aeronautical engineer with ready numerical values of (1), (2.) for air on
coming to rest, TabIe I has been computed for the standard values specified below- it.1 Taking
~= 1.40, one first writes (l), (2) in the convenient. working forms

PJPo= 1 + 0.60471 VozX 10-9, P2/Po = (1+ 1.7277 F02X WIO)3-W

For s eeds below that of sound no material error ensues from taking -y= 1.4o instead of the
slighhfy different values given in physics.
1.$ like table was computed for C. & R. Report h’o. 129,dated May 13, 1919, and o~e giving fire speeds was published by Finzi and Soldfdi
in 1S63,in their pamphfet” Esperimenti Sulk Dinamica dei Fluirii.”
411
412 REPORT NATIOATAL ADT71SC)RY COMMITTEE FOR AERONAUTICS

The computations were made by various members of the aerodynamics staff in the Con-
struction and Repair Aerodynamical Laboratory of the United States Navy, and checked by
the aeronautics staff at the Bureau of Standards, The diagrams were made by lfr, F. A.
Louden.
The importance of the pressure excess due to compression may be judged from tile tenth
column of the table. For speeds under 70 miIes an hour the excess is less than % per cent
of the impact pressure computed for air withouti compression. At 100 miles an hour, it is
0.41 per cent; at 150 miles, 0.96 per cent; at 300 miles, 4 per cent; at 800 mile?, 31 per cent.
The last is about the speed of sound and of some propeIIer tips, while 300 rniIes IS attained by
fast airplanes in diving.
~AIJllITY OF FORMULA

The validity of (2) is here assumed without proof; viz, the compression is assumed to
occur without sensible heat transfer, At speeds above 150 miles an hour, for which the density
increment is no longer negligible, the compression of the air fiIament from pO to Pz may occur
in very brief time. To illustrate, suppose air streaming at 200 feet a second across a rod 1
inch in diameter. From both theory. and experiment one knows that the speed is sensibly
unchecked at points 1 foot before the rod and I foot behind it. Hence a particle traversing
this range must receive its maximum compression in about & second. The dissipation of
compression heat in this case may be assumed negligible, both because of suddenness and
because the heating or cooling of any filament is paralleled by that of its immediate neighbors
thus lessening the temperature gradient.
It is commonly assumed also that for usuaI wind tunnel speeds the stop pressure ou a
large body equals that on a like small one in like conditions. In 1902 the writer found the
impact pressure in the nozzle of a j+inch pitot the same as in, a pipe 5 inches in diameter ~vhen
both were pointed upstream in a 6-foot wind tunnel maintaining a steady 40-mile wind. (Ref-
erence 1.) In December, 1925, he found the impact pressure in a square-ended glass tube of
%-in:h bore, po~ted ~nto. & 40-miIe wind, equal to that in a ~i~e tested neatly pointed hypo-
dermic tube 0.01 mch m dlameter,z truly to &r inch of water.

b~
i’)

FIG. l. —(lhiss U-tube pointing upwind find held by spindle s of

aerodynamic balance. In a .ifkm~lewind, pressure in hypoder-
mic nozzIe h balances that 8.t b truly to ~%ninch of water. Bore
of gIass tube % inch; bore of hypodermic tube 0.M97inch

The arrangement for this latter test is shown in Figure 1. A glass U-tube of ~%inch bore
with arms in a horizontal plane and pointing upstream, is held by a sheet metal clamp mounted
on the spindIe of the aerodynamic balance in the 4-foot wind tunneL With both ends wide
open in a 40-n~iIe wind the U-tube was adjusted, by cautin~ the balance, first till the small
piston of alcohol there shown just moved forward, then til~ it just moved backward. The
amount of cant was indicated by an Ames dial gauge at the tip of the balance beam. Now,
wifih the glass arms in their neutral position, and one plugged with a hypodermic needle of
i~-kch bore, as ShOWIIj the piston rested m the same equilibrium position as before in the
same wind. Since the dial gauge showed that a cant of 1 in 10,000 is sufficient to mo vc a
piston 3 inches long, of alcohol of specific gravity 0.81, the differential pressure betwwn the
fine and coarse nozzle can not exceed about + inch of water.
For the medium speeds listed in Table 1 many experiments have shown that the pitot impwt
pressure equals the reservoir pressure; that is, the pressure of stagnant air from which the stream
would issue with the speed VO through a perfect nozzIe. For such speeds therefore no corro-
borative data need be presented. For swifter flows Dr, Briggs furnishes some unpublished
measurements made by himself and Dr. 13uckingham showing that the static air pressure in
a reservoir equals the pitot pressure in its fair discharge nozzIe at exit, speecls of 400 to 1,000
feet a second, but progressively exceeds it for higher speeds up to that of sound, though the
exess is but a few per cent. Check measurements with improved apparatus will be made by
them before publication.
2Inside diameLer 0.0$97;ouLside, 0.0111inch.
 PRESSURE OF AIR ON COMING TO REST FROM VARIOUS SPEEDS 4’13
LOW-SPEED FORMULA

Table I therefore is -i-slid for bodies of all but microscopic size. For smaII bodies at low
speeds a tiscous pressure may ha~e to be added to the iner’tia pressure. As shown in hydro-
dynamics, the nose impact pressure on a sphere of radius a, Lxed in a bourdess uniform stream
of liquid, of viscosity p, is
~,3pF.
p3=; P*V. T~y (3)

The ratio of this to ‘$&o’/2, found for an inv-iscid liquid is

y=p J.5povo~=@ (4)

R
where R= a P“Jv is 12eynoIds Num~er. On plain section papery plots against R as an hyper-
bola asymptotic to the lines.y= 1, B = o.
For R quite kmge, as assumed for Table I, the viscous term is tiappreciable; for R small, as
w-hen a mist particle falk in air, that term is predominant.
Assuming p, to express the impact pressure of a tie pitot at small speeds, Muriel Barker
(Reference ~), of Cambfid~e LTfiYe~ity, pIotted it against the impact preswme p= determined
& her for the point of a pltot 1 millimeter in diameter held at the center of a long brass -pipe
II millimeters in diameter3 conducttig -water in steady stream-line flow at approximately 15° C.
Fixed speeds of unchecked flow from 0.82 to 11.76 centimeter-seconds at the pipe’s center were
used. For V.< 6 centimeter-seconds, or for R <30, faired values of p= plo t as a straight line

pe=p,[l.l; (5)
.
for R>30, p,=.5 POV02.
No correction of pe was made for the ratio-of bhe diameters of the pipq~nd pitot-. lJntiI this
has been don! (5) may be regarded as but. an approtiate expression for tl?e diflerentia!l pressure
of said pitot m a boundless stream.
,
HIGH-SPEED FORMULA
For speeds well above that of sound the value of (2) is doubt,f@; first because Y is then quite
~ariabl:, secondly, because the pressures given by (2) are much hrgher than the nose pressures
found m high-speed projectiles. For such speeds Rayleigh (Reference 3) derives a special
formula which, with Y= 1.40 reduces to

22_ 166.7 v.’

(6)
p.– C2(7V;– 0’)2.5“+ ‘

where 0 is the speed of sound in the unchecked stream. For ?70= C?, (6) and (2) gi-re the same
wdue of p2[p0. Rayleigh’s formula is indorsed in 13eference 4.
PRESSURE-SPEED GRAPHS

Fig. 2 shows graphically the absolute pressures gi-ren in Cohmns 4, 5 of Table I; also the
impact pressures got from them by subtracting unity.

Atrspeed In mtles per hour

Fm. 2.—Pressue of air cm coming to rest fmra various weeds

inner and outer diameters of the @@ rmd pitot am not be gleaned irom the p.pez cited.
414 REPORT NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR AERONAUTICS

With p = impact pressure plus viscou: pressure, the upper curve of Fig. 3 delineates p/.5p0
VOZversus V, for air on coming to rest against the nose of a sphere 1 mi~lirneter in diameter, It
shows the effect of viscosity at low speed and adiabatic compression at high speed, The lower
curve gives p/.5P0 V02 for water, in comparison with Miss Barker’s readings with the one milli-
meter pitot. Semilog paper is used to lengthen the low-speed scale.

Fm. 3.—Pressure of fluid on coming to rest from various spcels. plq W.

V.; P= im pact pressure plus viscous pressure, sphere 1 millimeter diameter;
Q=P. VW .

For ultra sound speeds two graphs are given in Figure 3; the higher derived from (2), the
lower from (6). The true impact pressure at these speeds is found by Stanton to be given by
Rayleigh’s formula within ~~o at 2.3times the speed of sound (Reference 4).

REFERENCES

]. .4. F. Zah~, “Measurement of air velocity and pressure,” Phys. Review, December,
1903.
2. BARKER, MURIEL, “On the use of very small pitot-tubes for measuring wind velocity,”
Proc. Roy. SOc. Len., Series A, Vol. Cl, 1922. (This reference was furnished the writer by
Dr. H. L. Dryden, United States Bureau of Standards.)
3. RAYLEIGII, “Scientific papers,” Vol. V, p. 608.
4. T. E. Stanton, “On the F1OWof (.lases at High Speeds, ” Proc. Royal Sot, 111A, 1926,
NO. A758.
 PRESSURE OF AIR ON COMING TO REST FROM VARIOUS SPEEDS
415
T.4BLE I
PRESSURE OF AIR ON- COMING TO REST FROM V.4RIOUS SPEEDS
(~ymbols defined &low)

irometrie plos im-

pact pressure in rnpact pressure in ponuds :rnpect.pressure
in
tiandard atmos- per square foot inches of water
pheres. I std. atmo.=2116.8 lb. I std. atmo.=4W.2
1 std. atmo.= per sq. ft. fn. of water
1.0133xl@ dvnes[ Pereent-
d%r-
enlx
Adiabatic
3ifa- $?//$=
Miies cuds IDeOm- nc o m-
leters ressible
pressible
h% RI per
IOur
1.n77xlo
-Is Val) 3.s4

0.000
o
~1:
.049 :
3.7
.196 ,
20 17.4 - @~
30 26.1 7% ;
40 34.7 I: 230
50 43.4 L774 [
60 521 2.415 :
70 60.8 3.156 ~
80 69.5 3. SW
90 78.2 4s39 ;
103 86.8 Fiw ,
110 9.5.5 7.130 ~
rxl lC&2 8.376 I
130 112 Q 9.728 ~
140 1.2L 6 11. li8 ,
154 130.3 12737 ~
160 138.9 143s9
liO 14i. 6 16.166 \
180 156.3
165.0 h:%: ~
% Ii3. 7 22.115
210 182 & 24318
228 ML O 26. @l
230 199.7 29.054 ~
240 p7: : 3L 591 I
m 344246 1
260 225.8 37.015 ~
!2i0 234. ~
39.902 ;
m 243.2 ~as!oi ,
290 25L 8 46.034 ,
3@J ~W. 6 49-279
310 y%; 52655 [
320 57.532 ~
330 2S6. 6 59.777
340 29.5.3 63.531 1
350 303.9 84.319 ;
34i. 4
136. %58 ;
M 434.2 200.402
521.0 %. W3
7C0 m7. 9 411. iii
803 694.7 55CL248
SQo 781.6 7~L 615
1,030 Mj.4 .0s5
11.5 .261
20
::; 30 I:z
46.1 40 L 633
57.6 50 2.354
69.1 60 3.20.5
S0.6 70 41!4
80 5.310
1%: 6.564
115.2 1% T. W
126.7 110 9.476
13% 2 ml 11.137
149.7 130 12.937
161.2 140 14. Sil
1727 150 16.952
184.5 ;E$ 19.175
lg~. g .
~ ~;
m. 2 180
218. f 2!.704
230.2 %

P.=1.0133X1@ d=km’=l ~td. atm~ U. s.. sw WIw=. (See N. A. C. A. Tecbnieel Report No. 218.)
PC=.0W2255 @cm3----------------- }
-,= L40.
Ve=.tir speed in cra[see.
pJp. (iimmpress.) =l+p. V.112p.=1+.60471X10-* Vat atmo.
~[p.,(adfabatic) =(1+(7-1) p, F,:/2
y p,)~fy-fE [1-Fl.72i7X10-1~ V.q 1“~ atmo.
using .(= L4U; woald 10wer We vahes in mII.ImrF 7 and 9 less than 0.02 YO for speds IeSS thm 3543fies Per ~Qm-