Halliday, Resnick & Walker — Fluids: Problem 23

23 g-LOC in dogfights. When a pilot takes a tight turn at high speed in a modern fighter airplane, the blood pressure at the brain level decreases, blood no longer perfuses the brain, and the blood in the brain drains. If the heart maintains the (hydrostatic) gauge pressure in the aorta at 120 torr (or mm Hg) when the pilot undergoes a horizontal centripetal acceleration of 4.5g, what is the blood pressure (in torr) at the brain, 30 cm radially inward from the heart? The perfusion in the brain is small enough that the vision switches to black and white and narrows to “tunnel vision” and the pilot can undergo g-LOC (“g-induced loss of consciousness”). Blood density is \(1.06 \times 10^3 \text{ kg/m}^3\).