Transmission of an acoustic pulse through a plane vortex sheet

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Abstract
This paper discusses the linear theory of the transmission of an acoustic pulse through a plane discontinuity of velocity. It is shown that elementary ideas of geometrical acoustics which have received much attention in the recent literature lead to the erroneous prediction of a zone of silence. It is in precisely this zone that unstable disturbances and broad-fronted pulses of enhanced intensity propagate, having been triggered-off by the arrival of the pulse at the vortex sheet. The apparent qualitative agreement between geometrical acoustics and experimental data regarding sound radiation from the interior of supersonic jets is shown to be purely fortuitous, and it is argued that a complete analysis of such problems must depend on a deeper and possibly non-linear treatment.

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