In an earlier topic we discovered that you can photograph the event of a “sonic boom” in two ways: 1) Through Schlieren photography and 2) through regular photography given the proper climatic conditions.
This has led to a further question. We have all heard that “super-sonic transport” does not occur over populated areas, mainly for the damage caused (to windows?) by the sonic boom, but how bad can that damage be to the human body?
We have the evidence of a video (albiet from a contested source) that shows a jet fly-by a carrier producing the effect mentioned in the second instance above.
But the jet is very close to the carrier and there are servicemen in the foreground. This leads to one of the following conclusions: Either the effects of a sonic boom are minimal (possibly fended off as easily as by using ear plugs?) or the effect produced in instance 2 above can be produced at subsonic speeds. (In which case Strainger would get the prize ).
Anybody familiar enough with the physics of sonic booms to give us an answer?
This is not definitive information but not quite a WAG either.
The sonic “boom” is just a loud noise. The shock wave itself (that causes the boom) doesn’t extend all that far from the aircraft. You could get in serious trouble from the shock wave if it hit you. (An explosion, after all, is nothing more than an expanding shock wave.) But other turbulence effects from being that close to a passing aircraft would also come into play.
It’s all a matter of proximity.
“I’ll tell him but I don’t think he’ll be very keen. He’s already got one, you see!”
Pluto’s absolutely correct about proximity. It’s the old inverse suare law of any expanding wave.
It’s not easy to be close to an aircraft going supersonic but some others have mentioned what I’ve seen, close passes near an aircraft carrier. In '83 our ship was sent to Central America for a “show of force.” The first time we did a supersonic fly by for visiting dignitaries sitting on folding chairs on the flight deck the shock wave knocked everyone over backwards. The plane was about flight deck level - 65 feet above the water - and less than 75 yards from the ship. In the debrief the pilot reported his true airspeed at about a thousand knots. From then on we did away with the chairs and told everyone to brace themselves.
The most likey way to get hurt by a sonic boom is hearing loss from gunfire. All gunfire is damaging but subsonic rounds are not nearly as loud.
Mil types likely know more about this, but I was told that assuming (the flying debris didn’t kill you) the first damage from a shock wave is to your hearing and the second type is that your lungs collapse and you suffocate, depending on the severity of the damage. Something about how the shock wave (from a bomb) shreds the lining of your lungs and they don’t work anymore, even though you can still “breathe” as normal. - MC
According to this site, the average sonic boom has an overpressure wave between 1 and 50 pounds per square foot. The loudest ever recorded was 144 psf by an F4 Phantom flying at 100 feet. The page says that the observers were not hurt. At that speed and altitude though, I’ll bet they never recovered the pilot’s seat cushion.
-LabRat
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed.
Well, there’s a lot of folks not around any longer who would likely want to mention that the overpressure from an exploding artillery shell is plenty enough to kill a person. I vaguely recall an account from Alistair Horne’s The Price of Glory in which numerous victims of the monstrous 420mm mortars that terrorized Verdun were found dead without a scratch on them. But that’s a blast, not a boom.
).