| Supersonic jets have been drawing great attention after the end of service for the Concorde was announced on April of 2003. It is believed, however, that civilian supersonic aircraft may make a viable return in the business jet market. This thesis focuses on the design optimization of feasible supersonic business jet configurations. Preliminary design techniques for mitigation of ground sonic boom are investigated while ensuring that all relevant disciplinary constraints are satisfied (including aerodynamic performance, propulsion, stability & control and structures.) In order to achieve reasonable confidence in the resulting designs, high-fidelity simulations are required, making the entire design process both expensive and complex. In order to minimize the computational cost, surrogate/approximate models are constructed using a hierarchy of different fidelity analysis tools including PASS, A502/Panair and Euler/NS codes. Direct search methods such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and a nonlinear SIMPLEX are employed to designs in searches of large and noisy design spaces. A local gradient-based search method can be combined with these global search methods for small modifications of candidate optimum designs. The Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (MADS) method can also be used to explore the design space using a solution-adaptive grid refinement approach. These hybrid approaches, both in search methodology and surrogate model construction, are shown to result in designs with reductions in sonic boom and improved aerodynamic performance. |
