Meaning of shock stall | Babel Free

Definitions

A stall (“sudden loss of lift”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds.

Examples

“When I was down to 32,000 feet the altimeter was spinning merrily and the dive was very steep and I was pulling back on the stick in the usual way due to the change of trim at the shock stall.”

“His [Group Captain Hugh Joseph Wilson's] flights revealed at least two things: the effectiveness of turbojets used for the first time in international record breaking, and he came sufficiently close to the speed of sound to experience the effects of a partial shock stall. [...] It was noticed that changes in the air flow occur when the speed approaches the speed of sound—or, in other words, the speed at which waves propagate themselves in air—and that these changes could lead to a partial or complete shock stall.”

“A new realm in aerodynamics is entered, with sound and shock waves, Mach number and compressibility making their appearance. Life saving dope is disseminated [during ground training] on the warning signals and recognition of shock stalls and measures in recovering from them.”

“Direct evidence is meagre, but suggests that local shockstalls of this type do not generally imply a severe increase of drag, but may occasionally set up buffeting effects.”

“Compressibility effects are not found to change the dynamic stall characteristics in principle until the Mach number gets high enough to cause shock-stall rather than leading edge stall.”

“In the present work, the shock stall of an oscillating NACA64A010 airfoil for which detailed experimental data are available is studied.”

“Anyone on the instructor's course should be experienced enough to handle the odd shock stall, which by definition was only going to happen at height where there was plenty of room to sort things out.”

CEFR level