Relating a Jet-Surface Interaction Experiment to a Commercial Supersonic Transport Aircraft Using Numerical Simulations

Abstract

Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations were performed for a commercial supersonic transport aircraft concept and experimental hardware models designed to represent the installed propulsion system of the conceptual aircraft in an upcoming test campaign. The purpose of the experiment is to determine the effects of jet-surface interactions from supersonic aircraft on airport community noise. RANS simulations of the commercial supersonic transport aircraft concept were performed to relate the representative experimental hardware to the actual aircraft. RANS screening simulations were performed on the proposed test hardware to verify that it would be free from potential rig noise and to predict the aerodynamic forces on the model hardware to assist with structural design. The simulations showed a large region of separated flow formed in a junction region of one of the experimental configurations. This was dissimilar with simulations of the aircraft and could invalidate the noise measurements. This configuration was modified and a subsequent RANS simulation showed that the size of the flow separation was greatly reduced. The aerodynamic forces found on the experimental models were found to be relatively small when compared to the expected loads from the model's own weight.

Using Numerical Simulations to Explore Top-Mounted Propulsion on a Conceptual Commercial Supersonic Transport Aircraft

“…The volume grid also included node clustering around the plume regions, with node spacing of 2 inches. An initial plume grid study showed lower than expected values of turbulent kinetic energy (tke) within the plume regions based on earlier simulations of a similar isolated nozzle configuration 7 . The spacing between nodes within the plume regions was subsequently halved, with results shown in Fig 6.…”

“…The Lockheed Martin LM1044-3b, a conceptual N+2 commercial supersonic transport aircraft 4 shown in Fig. 1, has been used in prior studies to better understand jet-surface interactions and to explore jet noise reduction techniques [5][6][7][8] . One such technique was to move the engines from underneath the wings to above the wings, which would allow for potential jet noise shielding relative to ground observers.…”