A New Approach for Incorporating Computational Fluid Dynamics into Sonic Boom Prediction

Abstract

A new approach for the inclusion of Computational Fluid Dynamics flow solutions into predicting sonic boom signatures is developed. Using existing CFD tools, a near-field flow solution is obtained over the surface of a computational cylinder a certain distance away from the aircraft longitudinal axis. Near-field to far-field multipole matching methodology is performed to calculate the corrected far-field without resorting to unnecessary numerical procedure of calculating the multipole coefficients. The analytical derivation is provided and some results are presented. The results obtained using this approach do not completely match with those obtained using earlier approaches. This is to be investigated in future work.