ON THE SPEED OF SOUND IN STEAM

Abstract

A study of the speed of sound in a pure water substance is presented here. The IAPWS data on the state of water and steam are applied only for investigating the speed of sound for a one-phase medium. A special numerical model for investigating the parameters of shock waves in steam is presented here and is applied for investigating extremely weak waves to obtain velocities representing the speed of sound in both one-phase and two-phase steam. Problems with the speed of sound in two-phase steam are discussed, and three types of speed of sound are derived for the metastable region of wet steam.

Keywords

• speed of sound
• steam
• IAPWS-IF97
• shockwave