Making sonic boom measurements during adverse weather: Summarizing BYU’s participation in QSF18

Abstract

One challenge with outdoor sonic boom measurements is making high-fidelity recordings under adverse weather conditions. This paper describes the deployment of a “weather-robust” measurement system as part of Brigham Young University’s (BYU) participation in the NASA Quiet Supersonic Flights 2018 (QSF18) test in Galveston, TX. BYU made measurements at four different stations across the city representing potentially different ambient environments: Scholes airport, a cemetery, a city park near a busy street, and the U.S. post office. At each station, multiple measurements were made using different data acquisition hardware and microphone types and configurations. These recordings, made within a few meters of each other, allowed for the comparison of different measurement approaches in terms of practicality, instrumentation noise floor, measurement bandwidth, wind noise, etc. The test itself and data analysis demonstrated the viability of the weather-robust measurement system, under real-world adverse weather conditions. They also yielded some lessons learned and recommended paths forward for future sonic boom measurements. [Work supported by NASA Langley Research Center through the National Institute of Aerospace.]