Compressible potential flows around round bodies: Janzen-Rayleigh expansion inferences

The subsonic, compressible, potential flow around a hypersphere can be derived using the Janzen-Rayleigh expansion (JRE) of the flow potential in even powers of the incident Mach number $\mathcal{M}_\infty$. JREs were carried out with terms polynomial in the inverse radius $r^{-1}$ to high orders in two dimensions (2D), but were limited to order $\mathcal{M}_\infty^4$ in three dimensions (3D). We derive general JRE formulae to arbitrary order, adiabatic index, and dimension. We find that powers of $\ln(r)$ can creep into the expansion, and are essential in 3D beyond order $\mathcal{M}_\infty^4$. Such terms are apparently absent in the 2D disk, as we confirm up to order $\mathcal{M}_\infty^{100}$, although they do show in other dimensions (e.g. at order $\mathcal{M}_\infty^2$ in 4D) and in non-circular 2D bodies. This suggests that the disk, which was extensively used to study basic flow properties, has additional symmetry. Our results are used to improve the hodograph-based approximation for the flow in front of a sphere. The symmetry-axis velocity profiles of axisymmetric flows around different prolate spheroids are approximately related to each other by a simple, Mach-independent scaling.