Speed of Sound in Liquids

This chapter begins by showing how the Tait equation of state to describe states associated with a liquid comes from a linear relationship between bulk modulus and pressure for an isothermal data set. The chapter then goes on to show several variations of the original Tait equation to include models for equations of state in salt water and liquid mixtures based on corresponding states. From these equations of states, it is shown how speed of sound for a pure liquid and liquid mixture can be derived. The chapter ends with a discussion on how one challenge associated with determining speed of sound through a liquid is how to determine a model for γ, which has been shown to related the two definitions of speed of sound—adiabatic and isothermal. This discussion includes a comparison of a model for speed of sound and empirical data provided from the National Institute of Standards and Testing where the discrepancy between the model and empirical data is exactly the absence of γ.