The Research of Supersonic Aircraft Low Sonic Boom Configuration Design and Optimizations

The big noise caused by sonic boom when the flight vehicle flying supersonically will not only has an influence on human lives but also bring a destroy to the constructions, especially for the infrasonic boom. The noise level of a Concord civil aircraft flying at the altitude of 50000 ft will be 133 dB, but the noise level of the civil aircraft is only about 90 dB when taking off and landing. Thus, the Concord was forbidden to fly over the continent supersonically because of the high sonic boom level, which played down the economy of Concord. The noise level of next generation supersonictransport is demanded lower than 70 dB, which is comparative with the transoniccivil aircraft. Thus mitigating the sonic boom is an exigent problem for next generation supersonic transports development.

The sonic boom of supersonic aircraft is a complex problem which refers to aircraft configuration design, aerodynamics, acoustics and so on. The research of sonic boom can be traced back to 1950’s. Since then, the sonic boom prediction methods based on supersonic linear theory, geometry acoustics and the sonic boom minimization theory have been applied to the supersonic transport design.