Inverse Design Method for Low-Boom Supersonic Transport with Lift Constraint

Abstract

The low-boom inverse design method is of great interest for the preliminary design of supersonic transport (SST), owing to its good capability of reducing sonic boom at low computational cost. However, the main challenge is how to prescribe an attainable target. This paper proposes an inverse design method using a new target-generation strategy to address this challenge. Unlike existing methods such as the Jones–Seebass–George–Darden method and the mixed-fidelity inverse design method [the Li–Shields–Geiselhart (LSG) method], the proposed method directly parameterizes the near-field overpressure distribution of a reference configuration and minimizes the ground perceived level in decibels (PLdB) predicted by solving the augmented Burgers equation to obtain an optimal target distribution, subject to cruise lift and volume constraints. The proposed method is demonstrated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Wing Body case, which shows that it mitigates sonic boom under lift constraint and achieves a reduction of 2.07 PLdB more than the LSG method. The proposed method is applied to the low-boom design of a large SST configuration called NPU-T7104, which is close in size to the Tupolev Tu-144; results show that aerodynamic performance is maintained while shock wave coalescence is effectively prevented, and ground-boom intensity is dramatically reduced.