system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is the maximum speed of a liquid running through a tube?
gpt
Engineering answer.. There is a practical speed limit called choked flow that occurs as the fastest streamlines approach the speed of sound. It basically says you can't increase the mass flow rate by decreasing the pressure downstream. If you increase the pressure upstream you are increasing the mass flow by increasing the density of the fluid. You can get to supersonic internal flow within a well configured nozzle (e.g. rocket throat/nozzle) but the pressure of the fluid is rapidly dropping in order to do so. Managing the shock waves and structural loads on tubing and valves gets nuts pretty fast, typically internal flows are kept subsonic for this reason.