Equivalent-Area Studies For Sonic Boom Loudness Mitigation on a Commercial Supersonic Aircraft Configuration

Since the early 1970s, the FAA has banned commercial supersonic flight over populated areas. This ban has limited aerospace manufacturers’ and commercial aircraft companies’ ability to design and operate subsonic aircraft in their fleets. Since then, research has been conducted to understand the sonic boom and learn how to minimize its loudness. The work presented in this project report aims to use a 1D low-fidelity analysis to study the effect of perturbations to the outer mold line (OML) of a representative model of the N+2 Quiet Commercial Supersonic Concept Aircraft. Using a 1D analysis that employs an equivalent area method, along with other supersonic propagation tools, many analyses can be quickly performed to perform design-space explorations that can inform higher fidelity results. The work presented in this report focuses on the effect on the perceived boom loudness of perturbation size at different aircraft locations while also comparing different flight conditions.