Mach number (M or Ma) (/mɑːk/; German: [max]) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound.[1][2]
\( {\displaystyle \mathrm {M} ={\frac {u}{c}},} \)
where:
M is the local Mach number,
u is the local flow velocity with respect to the boundaries (either internal, such as an object immersed in the flow, or external, like a channel), and
c is the speed of sound in the medium, which in air varies with the square root of the thermodynamic temperature.
By definition, at Mach 1, the local flow velocity u is equal to the speed of sound. At Mach 0.65, u is 65% of the speed of sound (subsonic), and, at Mach 1.35, u is 35% faster than the speed of sound (supersonic). Pilots of high-altitude aerospace vehicles use flight Mach number to express a vehicle's true airspeed, but the flow field around a vehicle varies in three dimensions, with corresponding variations in local Mach number.
The local speed of sound, and hence the Mach number, depends on the temperature of the surrounding gas. The Mach number is primarily used to determine the approximation with which a flow can be treated as an incompressible flow. The medium can be a gas or a liquid. The boundary can be traveling in the medium, or it can be stationary while the medium flows along it, or they can both be moving, with different velocities: what matters is their relative velocity with respect to each other. The boundary can be the boundary of an object immersed in the medium, or of a channel such as a nozzle, diffuser or wind tunnel channeling the medium. As the Mach number is defined as the ratio of two speeds, it is a dimensionless number. If M < 0.2–0.3 and the flow is quasi-steady and isothermal, compressibility effects will be small and simplified incompressible flow equations can be used.[1][2]
The Mach number is named after Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach,[3] and is a designation proposed by aeronautical engineer Jakob Ackeret in 1929. [4] As the Mach number is a dimensionless quantity rather than a unit of measure, the number comes after the unit; the second Mach number is Mach 2 instead of 2 Mach (or Machs). This is somewhat reminiscent of the early modern ocean sounding unit mark (a synonym for fathom), which was also unit-first, and may have influenced the use of the term Mach. In the decade preceding faster-than-sound human flight, aeronautical engineers referred to the speed of sound as Mach's number, never Mach 1.[5]
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