Evaluation of Sonic Boom Shock Wave Generation with CFD Methods

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been a renewed interest in the development of a new generation of supersonic aircraft for civil purposes that could potentially succeed Concorde. However, the noise annoyance is still considered one of the hampering factors to meet public consensus. This paper aims at revealing the potential of numerical simulations to predict sonic boom signature in Near Field at early design stages. In particular, the paper further demonstrates the applicability of the numerical approach proposed by NASA and other partners during the Sonic Boom Prediction Workshops held between 2014 and 2021, to compute the pressure signature of aircraft in the zone close to it. The results highlight the suitability of the approach (1) to capture the impact of aircraft flight condition variations on the sonic boom signature, (2) to enable the characterization of novel aircraft layout, including Mach 5 waverider configuration, (3) to provide near-field shock wave noise predictions that can be used to evaluate shock propagation, on-ground signature analyses, and annoyance assessment.