Oblique shock

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An oblique shock wave is a shock wave that, unlike a normal shock, is inclined with respect to the direction of incoming air. It occurs when a supersonic flow encounters a corner that effectively turns the flow into itself and compresses.^[1] The upstream streamlines are uniformly deflected after the shock wave. The most common way to produce an oblique shock wave is to place a wedge into supersonic, compressible flow. Similar to a normal shock wave, the oblique shock wave consists of a very thin region across which nearly discontinuous changes in the thermodynamic properties of a gas occur. While the upstream and downstream flow directions are unchanged across a normal shock, they are different for flow across an oblique shock wave.

It is always possible to convert an oblique shock into a normal shock by a Galilean transformation.