Friday, 13 November 2015

ideal gas - Calculating air density lapse with altitude (specifically, pressures)


This might be a bit more of an engineering question, but I'm calculating air density drop-off with altitude, and I'm having some problems calculating the pressure (I'll run through my method). This has been very useful in explaining, but the last bit lost me a little.


So we start with an ideal gas, then:


pV=nRT

and using ρVn=M
where M is molar mass, you can calculate density to be:


ρ=pMRT

which implies a solution dependent only on pressure (p) and temperature (T).


Then define temperature using the Universal Standard Atmosphere lapse rate, T=T0Lh

where L = 0.0065K/m and h is height in metres


Now at this point I'm a bit stuck. Wikipedia suggests the following equation:


p=p0(1LhT0)gMRL



Which, when calculated, provides values within a 5% tolerance - but where has it come from? I can't find any reference to its source or how it was derived. Can anyone help?




No comments:

Post a Comment

Understanding Stagnation point in pitot fluid

What is stagnation point in fluid mechanics. At the open end of the pitot tube the velocity of the fluid becomes zero.But that should result...