Atmosphere pressure lapse rate
Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:05 am
Hi all,
I finally had some time to look in to the atmospheric model again, and I noticed that Earth's atmosphere is much too thin. It basically ends around 25km, which is actually less than the maximum altitude of the SR-71! The dry adiabatic lapse rate model from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate is used. I like the idea of using a physical model, but I think the simplifications in the model just break down at high altitude.
I propose adding an "empirical correction factor" to the lapse rate. By multiplying the "lapseRate_L" variable in Planet.cpp by 0.4, we get an atmospheric pressure of 0.1 atm at about 17 km, which is in good agreement with experiments like this one:
https://gregklein.wordpress.com/2011/01 ... -altitude/
I finally had some time to look in to the atmospheric model again, and I noticed that Earth's atmosphere is much too thin. It basically ends around 25km, which is actually less than the maximum altitude of the SR-71! The dry adiabatic lapse rate model from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate is used. I like the idea of using a physical model, but I think the simplifications in the model just break down at high altitude.
I propose adding an "empirical correction factor" to the lapse rate. By multiplying the "lapseRate_L" variable in Planet.cpp by 0.4, we get an atmospheric pressure of 0.1 atm at about 17 km, which is in good agreement with experiments like this one:
https://gregklein.wordpress.com/2011/01 ... -altitude/