Supersonic Aerodynamics

Abstract

JUST before the outbreak of war in 1939, Dr. Ferri was in charge of the supersonic wind tunnel at Guidonia, near Rome, then by far the largest in the world. There he made some fundamental experiments, now classical, to determine how far the theories of the Gottingen school, led by Prandtl and Busemann, and of Ackeret's Zurich school, were supported by reality. These theories described the limiting steady highspeed motion, of a gas as the viscosity and thermal conductivity become vanishingly small. They were found to be correct except in certain minor respects, where the conflict is now becoming equally well understood. In his new book, Dr. Ferri gives an account of those pre-war theories (as well as of his experimental methods), describing them as the elementary aerodynamics of the supersonic flow of a 'perfect' fluid, though without making the nature of the underlying physical assumptions, or the extent of their validity, very clear while discussing fundamentals.

Elements of Aerodynamics of Supersonic Flows

By Antonio Ferri. Pp. xi + 434. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1949) 50s. net.