Acoustical Radiation Pressure Due to Incident Plane Progressive Waves on Spherical Objects

The expression for the force exerted on a “rigid” sphere by a plane progressive wave is computed by making use of the momentum formulation. The expression is general in the sense that it allows for variation of the density of the sphere relative to that of the surrounding medium, as well as for a wide range of ka (k = wave number, a =radius of sphere). The numerical calculations are confined to the range ka ⩽ 10.