It is often supposed that the flow of gas from a compressor is, or should be, stable if the pressure-flow characteristic has a negative slope. It is shown here that this is only true if the Mach number is zero, i.e. if the machine is pumping a liquid. As the Mach number is increased towards one, a third regime becomes more and more important, wherein disturbances give rise to damped oscillations. The flow in this regime is stable in the mathematical, but not in the physical sense, since disturbances can occur all the time.

Two conclusions can be drawn. First, although compressors with “flat” pressure-flow characteristics have a wide range of stable flow at low speeds, they are poor at high Mach numbers, where the flat part cannot be used. Next, the actual points on the characteristics at which the flow becomes unstable are not fixed, but depend to a large extent on the steadiness of the entry flow.