The Importance of Entropy in Hypersonic Flight

Entropy is a tough one to talk about, and I'm always nervous about talking about entropy without a whiteboard. So if we're mixing the flow, it's allowing heat to spread even more in the system. It's a different mechanism than turbulence, but it still leads to a higher mixing. In order to control the heat on a hypersonic body, we round the nose. A consequence of doing that is now we have a shock wave that's normal to the flow that's at 90 degrees to the flow. And so that's a very strong shock, and the largest entropy change will happen along that stagnation line. As you move away from the nose, the shock begins to