The International Standard Atmosphere (ISA) is an atmospheric model of how pressure, temperature, density of the Earth's atmosphere change over a wide range of altitudes. It is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an International Standard ISO 2533:1975 (https://www.iso.org/standard/7472.html).
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO - https://www.icao.int/Pages/default.aspx) uses this atmospheric models as baseline in its own standard enforcing. This standard is extensively used in the Aerospace industry for aircraft and engine design tasks considering operational envelopes.
This package contains the simple ICAO Standard Atmosphere models and calculates standard atmospheric air properties for an altitude of interest, as well as supports Mach number calculation for a moving object in space at the same altitude.
The package includes the following Functions included in package:
py_atmosphere.py- Function calculates the ICAO standard ambient temperature, pressure and density of the air at a given altitude.temp_conversion.py- Function does temperature unit conversion to a variety of units for ambient conditions that describe the ICAO standard atmosphere.mach_number.py- Given an altitude, function calculates the speed of sound in the embient conditions and calculates the Mach number for the speed of an object moving in the same environment.
There are multiple Python packages in the ecosystem that have the similar characteristics particularly when it comes to characterization of the standard atmophere. Existing packages with similar functionalities, particularly for ICAO standard calculations:
- atmos - programming utilities for atmospheric sciences (https://pypi.org/project/atmos/)
- metpy - reading, visualization and performing calculations with weather data (https://pypi.org/project/MetPy/)
- pyatmos - archive of routines that estimate the vertical structure of atmosphere with various density models (https://pypi.org/project/pyatmos/)
Use of the standard model on practical aerospace applications is quite limited. This package stands out given its unique blend of reference standards on practical design calculations, tailored for individuals with little to no technical expertise of the Aerospace industry and aircraft design. Here is what sets py_atmosphere apart:
- Package avoids complexity by performing simple, transparent calculations of high value on aircraft design parameters.
- Makes use of the standard for calculation on simple physical parameters such as speed of sound and Mach number for a moving object.
$ pip install py_atmosphere- Usage examples will be added in a future release.
Interested in contributing? Check out the contributing guidelines. Please note that this project is released with a Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.
py_atmosphere was created by Tianjiao Jiang, Zhengling Jiang, Francisco Ramirez. It is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.
py_atmosphere was created with cookiecutter and the py-pkgs-cookiecutter template.
- Francisco Ramirez
- Zhengling Jiang
- Tianjiao Jiang
