I’m wondering about the ‘ordinary’ glass used in home windows and the like.
All sonic booms are not alike. What did you have in mind and at what distance?
Nor are all window frames. Are we talking glass nestled between two snakes of rubbery silicone, or straight up oak and nails with 70 year old hard caulk?
Wayyyy underspecified. The crack of a whip is a sonic boom.
I’m looking for the chart I was using last week that described window size (area) versus overpressure necessary for 50% of the windows that size to break. As previous posters have stated, the answer is going to vary. A lot. Here’s a good start as to expected damage from different overpressures:
Overpressure*
(psig) Expected Damage
0.04 Loud noise (143 db); sonic boom glass failure.
0.15 Typical pressure for glass failure.
0.40 Limited minor structural damage.
0.50-1.0 Windows usually shattered; some window frame damage.
0.70 Minor damage to house structures.
1.0 Partial demolition of houses; made uninhabitable.
1.0-2.0 Corrugated metal panels fail and buckle. Housing wood panels blown in.
1.0-8.0 Range for slight to serious laceration injuries from flying glass and other missiles.
2.0 Partial collapse of walls and roofs of houses.
2.0-3.0 Non-reinforced concrete or cinder block walls shattered.
2.4-12.2 Range for 1-90% eardrum rupture among exposed populations.
2.5 50% destruction of home brickwork.
3.0 Steel frame buildings distorted and pulled away from foundation.
5.0 Wooden utility poles snapped.
5.0-7.0 Nearly complete destruction of houses.
7.0 Loaded train cars overturned.
9.0 Loaded train box cars demolished.
10.0 Probable total building destruction.
14.5-29.0 Range for 1-99% fatalities among exposed populations due to direct blast effects.
Remember that the pressure decreases as a cube of the distance, as well, so a big boom far away is functionally equivalent to a smaller, closer boom.
ETA: Here’s another, they’re pretty similar.
Overpressure, psi
Expected Damage
0.04
Very loud noise (143 dB); sonic boom glass failures
0.1
Breakage of small windows under strain
0.15
Typical pressure of glass failure
0.30
10% of windows broken
0.5
Windows shattered, limited minor damage to house structures
0.7
Upper limit for reversible effects on humans
1.0
Partial demolition of houses; corrugated metal panels fail and buckle; skin lacerations from flying glass
2.0
Partial collapse of walls and roofs of houses
2.4
Eardrum rupture of exposed populations
2.5
Threshold for significant human lethality
3.0
Steel frame building distorted and pulled away from foundation
5.0
Wooden utility poles snapped
10
Probable total building collapse. Lungs hemorrhage
20
Total destruction. 99% fatality due to direct blast effects
Say a normal (but supersonic) passenger plane going overhead at cruising altitude.
Well, a normal passenger plane at cruising altitude never breaks the sound barrier, so there is never a sonic boom associated with them.
(I see you’ve edited).
At cruising altitude, not much will happen. It’d sound like distant thunder,if you heard it at all, I would imagine.
Okay, I found a similar one:
Page 192 and 193 should be of interest (they’re just graphs).
This page looks to be of interest, too:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s528517.htm
Keep in mind the figures in that article are measured in pounds per foot instead of psi like most sources do, so there’s a factor of 144. Also, keep in mind that
db = 20*log(P/Pref) and Pref is 20 uPa if you want to convert from decibels to pressure.
That is good research and links, Santo Rugger. Thank you for making that effort.
Thanks!
It wasn’t too much effort, since I recently did a calc at work to determine if the public windows off site were going to need shielding if there was an inadvertent detonation during a project. There was a specific maximum amount of energetic material specified, a distance, and the size of the windows. My recommendation was to use HESCOs, but since it was so close to the threshold, they were able to simply do the work under a tent.