Can the sound barrier be broken under water?

Question

Technology today yes cannot do it.
However what would happen when we can?
Remember they originally thought an aircraft would never go beyond the sound barrier, hence it's name.

Answer 1

The speed of sound in water is 3240 miles per hour. If an object could travel that speed under water, it would create a shockwave in the water that also travels at 3240 mph. But there is nothing on earth that can travel that speed underwater so who knows what that would be like.

Answer 2

The Russians are supposed to have a rocket powered torpedo that can break the underwater sound barrier. However, other naval analyists believe that this rumored top speed is an exaggeration. So the answer, for now, appears to be is "no".

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...The weapon is the famous (or infamous) Russian VA-111 Shkval rocket torpedo and its variants, capable of speeds of more than 200 knots underwater. This speed is achieved by the rocket pushing the sharply tapering, flat-tipped torpedo so fast that a vacuum bubble forms around the body of the weapon, greatly reducing water resistance -- the process, for the uninitiated, is called supercavitation. ...

...Among errors of fact that one might have read in a newspaper or on-line news digest, or even seen in a TV documentary, is that Shkval-type weapons move faster than their own noise. This makes them totally undetectable to their victim -- a Virginia-class sub is sometimes mentioned in this context as a choice target -- until the rocket torpedo detonates and the American sub is destroyed. There's just one serious problem with this, not for the Virginia-class sub but for the enemy. The speed of sound in seawater varies subtly with local conditions, but is typically just under one statute mile per second -- five times the speed of sound in air, for comparison. This makes the speed of sound in seawater about 3,000 knots. A supercavitating weapon doing 300 knots is barely making Mach 0.1 in the medium in which both it and its target are located. And rocket engines are terribly noisy. That noise signature will travel on ahead of the Shkval to be heard by a submarine's passive sonars well before weapon impact. As detailed below, (and despite bellicose Iranian claims to the contrary), American submariners have an ample toolkit for swiftly throwing off the Shkval's aim, and then fighting back.

Answer 3

Sounds are vibrations in an elastic medium. In gases sound travels longitudinally at different speeds, mostly depending on the molecular mass and temperature of the gas; whilst pressure has a much smaller effect. Since air temperature and composition varies significantly with altitude, mach numbers for aircraft are related to the speed of sound at sea level. In water at room temperature supersonic can be considered as any speed greater than 1,440 m/s or 4,724 ft/s. In solids, sound waves can be longitudinal or transverse and have even higher velocities.

Basic the speed of sound changes through its medium.

Theoreticlly YES.
No public acknowledgement of this success has been published

Answer 4

Surprisingly, no! The sound barrier in an incompressable medium (such as water) cannot be broken. What happens instead is that the vessel vaporizes the liquid and travels through a pocket of gas at super-sonic speeds. This is called "cavitation".

Super-cavitating torpedos and (theoretical) naval vessels take advatage of this by using a specially shaped nose to encapsulate the entire device in a bubble of steam. At this point, the torpedo is essentially "flying" at super-sonic speeds.

Answer 5

Are you talking about going faster than 600 mph under water or are you talking about actually going so fast that you travel faster than sound through water?

The speed of sound through the water is much greater than the speed of sound through air.

Regardless, we are a long way from making any kind of craft that could come anywhere close to those speeds. The navy will not disclose exactly how fast our torpedoes travel, but it is closer to 60 or 70 mph than it is to 100.

I'm guessing that anything that ever travels under water in excess of 100 mph will be travelling through a tube of air and not really travelling through the water.

Answer 6

It may not be possible to do that with the present technology available to us.It may take a few years', but it is possible. It's just as u ponted out - people did deem it impossible to break the sound barrier in air too. The main hurdle will obviously be the immence amount of drag offered by water as compared to air (evevn at sea level).

Answer 7

I suppose it might not be theoretically impossible, but the engineering challenge would be far beyond our technology. Supersonic aircraft always fly very high to get out of the dense lower atmosphere because there is too much drag there. Water is way, way denser than the lower atmosphere.

Answer 8

sound doesn't travel as fast in water as it does in air. In fact, the speed of sound is faster at higher elevations because the air is thinner and there's less resistance on sound waves. If you did break the sound barrier, you would not get the same outcome. Water is much denser than air.

Answer 9

Given digitalhanout's numbers, there are some bullets whose muzzle velocity approaches 4700 fps. Firing one of those into the water should do it.

Obviously, no watercraft of any size will be doing it any time soon.

Answer 10

Interesting question. I've never thought of it. It can't currently be done. Could it ever theoretically be done? I don't know. That question should be addressed by an expert in fluid dynamics. I have my doubts.