Laboratory study of outdoor and indoor annoyance caused by sonic booms from sub-scale aircraft

Abstract

Advances in integrated system design tools and technologies have enabled the development of supersonic aircraft concepts that are predicted to produce sonic booms with lower loudness levels while maintaining aerodynamic performance. Interest in the development of a low-boom flight demonstration vehicle for validating design and prediction tools and for conducting community response studies has led to the concept of a sub-scale test aircraft. Due to the smaller size and weight of the sub-scale vehicle, the resulting sonic boom is expected to contain spectral characteristics that differ from that of a full-scale vehicle. In order to justify the use of sub-scale aircraft for community annoyance studies, it is necessary to verify that these spectral differences do not significantly affect human response. The goal of the current study is to evaluate both outdoor and indoor annoyance caused by sonic booms predicted for these two classes of vehicles. The laboratory study is conducted in two sonic boom simulators that provide a realistic reproduction of the outdoor and indoor sonic booms. The indoor facility also provides a realistic listening environment to address the effect on human annoyance of interior rattle noises predicted to be induced by the structural excitation from the sonic boom.