Aerospace Engineer Mock Interview
Master 25 Aerospace Engineer interview questions covering propulsion, aerodynamics, and systems design.
Question 10 of 25
What effect causes the "thrumming" noise you hear when a car window is opened on the highway?
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Ryan Brunner has over ten years of experience recruiting, interviewing, and hiring candidates in the healthcare, public service, and private manufacturing/distribution industries.
As an Aerospace Engineer, your interviewer will look to see that you are able to bring basic classroom concepts to real world scenarios and this question presents one of those scenarios. We've all been in the scenario that the question poses when a car is at high speed and a window is cracked open. As the window remains opens, the sound produced can be as loud as a jet or sound like someone pounding a drum in the back seat of the vehicle. This effect is called the Helmholtz Resonance, so be sure to be prepared to talk about the effect and what causes it as you answer this question.
Ryan Brunner has over ten years of experience recruiting, interviewing, and hiring candidates in the healthcare, public service, and private manufacturing/distribution industries.
"That loud noise is produced by what is known as the Helmholtz Resonance and I'm very familiar with this phenomenon as I have young children that love to play the window opening game in the car. The buffeting effect is caused when gases pass through a single orifice and interact with gas within a container. In the case presented, the container is the vehicle and the orifice is the open window. When the two air masses collide inside the car, a vortex is created that compresses and decompresses and that compression causes the noise."
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