Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
The object of this paper is to give a brief account of the development of the study of hypersonic flow over the past three decades, and to stress some of the ways in which hypersonic flow differs from supersonic flow. In some of the early work on the subject a wrong emphasis was given to the study of flows with attached shock waves and to the nature of the shock boundary layer interaction problem, and it is only quite recently, mainly as a result of experimental work, that it has become possible to obtain a balanced picture of the important features of hypersonic flow fields. In the present paper real gas effects are not taken into account; in general, the inclusion of these effects will not markedly alter the picture given.