An Introduction to Oblique Shocks

There are many times when shock surfaces are not perpendicular to the flow direction.   Examining the figure at the right, you can see that the shock wave is at an oblique angle with respect to the upstream flow (left to right).   Not much additionally difficulty is added when oblique shocks are studied.  This is beacuse the component of velocity tangent to the shock does not change across the shock wave.  The velocity component normal to the shock changes in exactly the same way as it did for normal shocks.   Therefore, to analyze the flow with oblique shocks, we only have to account for a change in the normal velocity component with a constant tangential velocity component. shock wave.jpg (2613 bytes)