Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2006
The pressure distribution which results from the disturbance of initially plane, parallel, and constant-pressure inviscid supersonic flow in which there is a strong entropy variation near a surface is investigated. The disturbance considered may arise from a small deflection of the surface or may be the result of a simple wave impinging on the entropy layer. This linear problem has been treated previously by a somewhat different technique for transonic entropy layers by Howarth (1948), Tsien & Finston (1949), and Lighthill (1950, 1953). The results obtained in this investigation are useful principally in that they permit the general behaviour of such pressure distributions to be deduced without resort to the more general method of characteristics for rotational flows.