Low-Boom Design of a T-tail Supersonic Transport Configuration

Sonic boom remains the primary bottleneck restraining commercial supersonic overland flight. However, designing a low-boom supersonic transport configuration with high aerodynamic efficiency is still a significant challenge. To address this problem, a baseline configuration with both low-boom and low-drag features is initially designed. Subsequently, low-boom inverse design and manual design are carried out successively. Regarding the inverse design, JSGD (Jones-Seebass-George-Darden) method is used to decrease the overpressure amplitude rapidly, while mixed-fidelity method is adopted to reduce the loudness to a lower level, where the target with volume and lift constraints is generated by PNFO (parameteric near-field pressure) method. For manual design, the flow field of aft-body region is analysed for the design of aft-body components. By adjusting the shape and position of T-tail, the shocks interfere with expansion waves beneficially, which smooths the pressure recovery of ground signature. Compared to baseline configuration, under the premise of maintaining cabin volume and cruise lift, design configuration exhibits more moderate near-field and far-field signatures. The undertrack ground loudness is reduced from 91.43 PLdB to 79.88 PLdB. Besides, full-carpet sonic boom intensity is significantly mitigated, with the lowest ground loudness of 77.88 PLdB recorded at the lateral cutoff angle. Additionally, the cruise lift-to-drag ratio is increased from 8.44 to 8.61. The configuration proposed in this paper can serve as a platform for researches of other supersonic transport technologies in the future.