Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Low-Boom Supersonic Aircraft with Mission Constraints

Design of low-boom supersonic aircraft is heavily dictated by aircraft volume and lift distributions. These unique design characteristics make it a challenge to enforce mission requirements (such as static margins and trim requirements) during design optimization. This low-boom design challenge is resolved by using reversed equivalent area targets for low-fidelity low-boom design and a decomposition method for multidisciplinary design optimization(MDO).The corresponding low-boom MDO problem includes aircraft mission constraints for cruise ranges, cruise speeds, trim margin for low-boom cruise, static margins for takeoff/cruise/landing, tail rotation angles for trim at takeoff/landing, takeoff/landing field lengths, and approach velocity, as well as volume constraints for cabin and main landing gear packaging. The decomposition method is developed to optimally resolve the conflicts between the low-boom design objective and other design constraints. The decomposition method is successfully applied to design a low-boom supersonic configuration that carries 40 passengers, has low-boom cruise of Mach 1.6 with range ≥ 2,500 nm, and can also cruise at Mach 1.8 with range ≥ 3,600 nm. The generated configuration satisfies all specified mission constraints and has the potential to achieve a low-boom ground noise level below 75 PLdB.