ABSTRACT
A study of compressible flows is important because of the wide range of examples that exist: natural gas piped from producer to consumer, high-speed flight through air, discharging of compressed gas tanks, flow of air through a compressor, flow of steam through a turbine, and many others. The material presented includes calculation of sonic velocity in a fluid, the concept of isentropic flow, flow through a nozzle, shock waves, and compressible flow in a pipe with friction. The type of flow considered in this chapter is a steady isentropic flow. It is apparent that two different flow regimes exist in compressible flow: subsonic and supersonic. The criterion used to distinguish between the two is the Mach number, defined as the ratio of flow velocity to the sonic velocity in the medium:M=Va. The chapter discusses stagnation properties, in particular stagnation temperature and stagnation pressure.
