A generalization of the Wiener-Hopf technique
The drag depends on the ratio of the length of the body to the distance traveled from rest to reach the speed of sound. The presence of an acceleration causes a finite drag at the speed of sound in contrast to the infinite value in the steady case. As the value of the acceleration decreases the drag tends to infinity as the inverse fourth root of the acceleration. Another difference with the steady case is the concentration of infinite pressure at the nose. In this connection it may be concluded that the lift distribution on an accelerated wing will introduce a stalling moment in going through the speed of sound. It may be seen from formula (15) that extremely high values of the acceleration are needed for usual body sizes before the effect becomes appreciable. It must be added that the methods presented in this paper are not restricted to the acceleration of a wedge. By superposition of positive and negative wedges the method solves the problem for a symmetric body of arbitrary shapes with constant acceleration. Furthermore, it will be noted that expressions (6), (7) and (8) may easily be generalized to cover not only the symmetric body of arbitrary shape but also the case of completely arbitrary motion. The present paper indicates how the pressure distribution in such cases may be completely expressed by quadratures.