Analysis of sonic boom measurements near shock wave extremities for flight near Mach 1.0 and for airplane accelerations

The analysis of the 14 low-altitude transonic flights showed that the prevailing meteorological consideration of the acoustic disturbances below the cutoff altitude during threshold Mach number flight has shown that a theoretical safe altitude appears to be valid over a wide range of meteorological conditions and provides a reasonable estimate of the airplane ground speed reduction to avoid sonic boom noise during threshold Mach number flight. Recent theoretical results for the acoustic pressure waves below the threshold Mach number caustic showed excellent agreement with observations near the caustic, but the predicted overpressure levels were significantly lower than those observed far from the caustic. The analysis of caustics produced by inadvertent low-magnitude accelerations during flight at Mach numbers slightly greater than the threshold Mach number showed that folds and associated caustics were produced by slight changes in the airplane ground speed. These caustic intensities ranged from 1 to 3 time the nominal steady, level flight intensity.