Critical Mach number and slow down as it travels around the aircraft's structure. When the aircraft's airspeed reaches the critical Mach number, the speed of the airflow in some areas near the airframe reaches the speed of sound, even though the aircraft itself has an airspeed lower than Mach 1.0. This creates a weak shock wave. As the aircraft exceeds the critical Mach number, its drag coefficient increases suddenly, causing dramatically increased drag, and, in an aircraft not designed for transonic or supersonic speeds, changes to the airflow over the flight control surfaces lead to deterioration in control of the aircraft. In aircraft
Mach number speeds, it is a dimensionless number. If < 0.2–0.3 and the flow is quasi-steady and isothermal, compressibility effects will be small and simplified incompressible flow equations can be used. The Mach number is named after Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, and is a designation proposed by aeronautical engineer Jakob Ackeret. As the Mach number is a dimensionless quantity rather than a unit of measure, with Mach, the number comes "after" the unit; the second Mach number is "Mach2" instead of "2Mach" (or Machs). This is somewhat reminiscent of the early modern ocean sounding unit "mark" (a synonym for fathom),