shock-stall

A form of shock stall — A stall (“sudden loss of lift”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds.

Meanings

nounshock-stall (plural shock-stalls)

plural shock-stalls

  1. alternativeAlternative form of shock stall.

    The full shock-stall actually does not occur until the minimum angle of attack has been nearly reached.

    1994, 25th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference: June 20–23, 1994
    2 more examples

    In particular, the use of swept-back wings had facilitated high-speed flight by delaying the onset of shock-stalls.

    1952, Flight International, volumes 61–62, page 655

    Compressibility effects are not found to change the dynamic stall characteristics in principle until the Mach number gets high enough to cause shock-stall' rather than leading edge stall.

    1968, Lars E. Ericsson, J. Peter Reding, Unsteady Airfoil Stall and Stall Flutter (NASA Contractor Report; NASA/CR-111906), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, →OCLC, page 34
verbshock-stall (third-person singular simple present shock-stalls, present participle shock-stalling, simple past and past participle shock-stalled)

present singular third person shock-stalls · participle present shock-stalling · participle past shock-stalled · past shock-stalled

  1. alternativeAlternative form of shock stall.
    1 more example

    The separation of the flow over wings precipitated by the compression shock that forms as speeds are increased into the supercritical Mach number range has imposed serious difficulties in the improvement of aircraft performance. These difficulties arise principally as a consequence of the rapid drag rise and the loss of lift that causes serious stability changes when the wing shock-stalls.

    1948 August, John Stack, W. F. Lindsey, “Summary”, in Characteristics of Low-aspect-ratio Wings at Supercritical Mach Numbers (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Technical Note; no. 1665), Washington, D.C.: National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, →OCLC, page 1
Cite this entry
APA

shock-stall. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shock-stall

MLA

“shock-stall.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shock-stall. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “shock-stall,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shock-stall.

Source: shock-stall on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.