Sonic Boom Minimization and Atmospheric Effects

Abstract

The represenred paper is a brief overview of some activities in sonic boom area being performed in Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after prof. N.E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI) in Russia These efforts are focused on the improvement of the existing sonic boom calculation methods and on the development the new ones. These activities are targeted at the sonic boom minimization technique, the method of evaluation the atmosphere effect upon the sonic boom properties, the search of alternative different weight categories supersonic aircraft configurations with low boom level. At the same time these configurations will provide the high aerodynamic characteristics and high weighting efficiency. Some peculiarities of the developed calculation and boom minimization technique are taken into consideration. The problem of the sonic boom wave propagation in stratified atmosphere with 3D wind is considered at the geometrical acoustics approximation. The conditions when the sonic boom carpet generated by the rays propagating downward from aircraft becomes multiply connected are formulated. The influence of the atmospheric turbulence on the characteristic rays trajectories of plane incident shock wave is investigated in simplified model problem definition. The isotropic character of the atmospheric turbulence is assumed. It was assumed that the atmosphere turbulence is “frozen”, i.e. the time of acoustic wave passing through the turbulent media is considerably less, than the atmosphere turbulence structures evolution time