Intensity of focused sonic booms in straight flight at constant altitude

The occurrence of focused sonic booms is studied. The nature of a sonic boom and its occurrence on the ground are first discussed, and the development of focused sonic booms is considered. For accelerated, straight flight at constant altitude, conditions for the generation of sonic booms are addressed. An expression for the pressure jump of a sonic boom is obtained using previously published work and delay equalization. A similar technique is used to calculate the "focus factor" of a focused sonic boom, defined as the pressure jump of the superboom divided by the pressure jump of a sonic boom at the same place, generated by a level flight with the same Mach number. Comparisons with experimental results show very satisfactory agreement.