How far away from the ground track did it drop to, say, the level.of heavy traffic? Or something else that people do not mind hearing?
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asked Feb 11 at 3:04
Abdullah is not an AmalekiteAbdullah is not an Amalekite
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$\begingroup$ Does this answer your question? Can a sonic boom produced at 60,000' be heard on the ground? $\endgroup$– Aadiraj AnilCommented Feb 11 at 5:31
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2$\begingroup$ @AadirajAnil no, it's about altitude, not ground track $\endgroup$– Abdullah is not an AmalekiteCommented Feb 11 at 5:58
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What you're asking about is called a "carpet", and sometimes, if I'm not mistaken, a "skirt".
Concorde was claimed to have a 20 km wide carpet (10 km either side), but in reality it was heard up to 40 km from the flight path.[Rogers] The secondary carpet was negligible (it's also delayed, if I recall correctly, by 15 minutes). Anyway, the best source is a public NASA report by Maglieri—here are two figures from it:
The N-wave estimation is 1 mile per 1,000' altitude, so the lower, the smaller the carpet. Feel free to use the report to write a more detailed answer.
Also, as I've quoted here, the pressure from Concorde's boom was "equivalent to the pressure one would feel when putting a hand out of the window of a car travelling at 30mph".
- Rogers, Peter H., and Domenic J. Maglieri. "Concorde booms and the mysterious east coast noises." Acoust Today 11.2 (2015): 34-40.
- Maglieri, Domenic J., et al. "Sonic boom: Six decades of research." (2014). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150006843