Oblique Shock Calculator
Solves all three directions — wedge angle to shock, shock to deflection, and Mach number from two measured angles. Both roots, the detachment limit and the full downstream state, at any γ.
1.001 to 50
Wedge half-angle, 0 to 75°
From the upstream flow, 0 to 90°
θ–β–M diagram
your M₁
other Mach numbers
maximum deflection
M₂ = 1
What this is computing
NOT WRITTEN YET — Iliya writes this, 300–500 words.
This block is deliberately loud so it cannot ship by accident. It is the part the thin AI calculator sites cannot fake, and the part that earns a link from a lecturer, so generated filler here would defeat the purpose. Worth covering:
- Why θ→β has two roots at all, and what physically selects between them — downstream pressure, not the wedge.
- Why the strong solution is rarely observed in external flow, and where it genuinely does occur.
- What detachment means physically: the bow shock, the standoff distance, and why the wedge stops being the relevant length scale.
- That the flow behind the weak shock is not always supersonic — between the M₂ = 1 line and the maximum-deflection line it is subsonic, which the usual shorthand glosses over. The chart above shows the two loci separately for exactly this reason.
- Why γ matters: what changes for combustion products at 1.3 or a helium tunnel at 1.667, and why a 1.4-only calculator is useless there.