Diffraction of acoustic waves on the leading edge of a flat plate in a supersonic flow

A scheme is proposed for calculating the intensity of the acoustic wave field generated by diffraction of a beam of acoustic waves on a sharp leading edge of a flat plate in a supersonic flow. This wave field is shown to be a functional of the mass-flow amplitude distribution in the acoustic field at the level of the plate surface upstream of the latter. This distribution can be found on the basis of measurements. The discontinuity of the normal-to-plate component of the velocity perturbation on the plate edge plays an important role in determining mass- flow fluctuations along the plate. At large distances from the leading edge of the plate, where the diffraction wave on the boundary-layer edge degenerates into longitudinal acoustic waves, the amplitude of mass-flow fluctuations decreases with increasing distance from the leading edge and depends on wave orientation. © 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.