Diffraction of sonic booms around buildings resulting in the building spiking effect

The diffraction of a sonic boom around a building of finite dimensions yields amplification of the front shock and a positive spike that follows the tail shock in the pressure waveform recorded at the incident side of the building's exterior surface. This physical phenomenon is consistently fou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2011-03, Vol.129 (3), p.1250-1260
Main Authors: Cho, Sang-Ik T., Sparrow, Victor W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Aeroacoustics, atmospheric sound
Aircraft
Buildings
Computer Simulation
Diffraction
Exact sciences and technology
Facility Design and Construction
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
High-Energy Shock Waves
Impulse response
Linear Models
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Motion
Noise, Transportation
Nonlinear acoustics, macrosonics
Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted
Physics
Pressure
Sonic booms
Sound Spectrography
Spiking
Time Factors
United States
United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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Summary:The diffraction of a sonic boom around a building of finite dimensions yields amplification of the front shock and a positive spike that follows the tail shock in the pressure waveform recorded at the incident side of the building's exterior surface. This physical phenomenon is consistently found both in the data obtained from a 2006 NASA flight test and field experiment, and in the finite-difference time-domain simulation that models this particular experiment, and the authors call it the "building spiking" effect. This paper presents an analysis of the numerical and the accompanying experimental results used to investigate the cause of this effect. The simulation assumes linear acoustics only, which sufficiently describes the physics of interest. Separating the low and high frequency components of boom recordings using optimal finite impulse response filters with complementary magnitude responses shows that the building spiking effect can be attributed to the frequency dependent nature of diffraction. A comparison of the building spiking effect of a conventional N-wave and a low-amplitude sonic boom shows that a longer shock rise time leads to less pronounced amplification of the exterior pressure loading on buildings, and thus reveals an advantage of shaping a boom to elongate its rise time.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/1.3543984