Measurement of the spatio-temporal gas density profile of a supersonic jet

Supersonic jets are important for many experiments in physics, chemistry, and engineering sciences. Characterization of the density profile of the gas released from the nozzle is crucial for many applications and generally requires complicated measurements. A method that uses a common microphone to characterize the spatio-temporal gas profile of the supersonic jet is demonstrated here. Calibrating the microphone signals with the pressure change in the stagnation chamber, it is shown that it is possible to measure the complete density profile of the conical gas emission from the supersonic jet. It is shown that any conical section has a gaussian radial profile and that the peak densities decrease as 1/z′2, where z′ is the distance from the nozzle.