NACA Technical Memorandums

A large number of papers have been devoted to the problem of integration of equations of two-dimensional steady nonvertical adiabatic motion of a gas. Most of these papers are based on the application of the hodograph method of S. A. Chaplygin in which the plane of the hodograph of the velocity is taken as the region of variation of the independent variables in the equations of motion; the equations become linear in this plane. The exact integration of these equations is, however, obtained in the form of infinite series containing hypergeometric functions. The obtaining of such solutions and their investigation involves extensive computations. As a result, methods have been developed for the approximate integration of the equations of motion first transformed to a linear form. S. A. Chaplygin first pointed out such an approximate method applicable to flows in which the Mach number does not exceed 0.4