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ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA ›› 2023, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (2): 626310-626310.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2021.26310

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Research progress in key technologies for conceptual-aerodynamic configuration design of supersonic transport aircraft

Yulin DING1,2, Zhonghua HAN1,2(), Jianling QIAO1,2, Han NIE1,2, Wenping SONG1,2, Bifeng SONG1,2   

  1. 1.Research Center for Environment-Friendly Supersonic Civil Transports (ReCESST)/Institute of Aerodynamic and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization,School of Aeronautics,Northwestern Polytechnical University,Xi’an 710072,China
    2.National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerodynamic Design and Research,Northwestern Polytechnical University,Xi’an 710072,China
  • Received:2021-09-02 Revised:2021-09-24 Accepted:2021-10-12 Online:2023-01-25 Published:2021-10-14
  • Contact: Zhonghua HAN E-mail:hanzh@nwpu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(11972305);Shaanxi Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars(2020JC-13)

Abstract:

Next-generation Supersonic Transport Aircraft (STA) has become one of the main future directions for civil aviation transport. Compared with subsonic civil aircraft, STA involves a series of technical problems such as sonic boom and is confronted with more strict performance indexes, imposing higher requirements for the conceptual aerodynamic configuration design. This paper classifies the existing supersonic civil aircraft configurations in the world into three generations according to the design strategy and the main technical features. The first-generation configurations mainly adopt a delta wing/ double-delta wing platform to achieve supersonic civil flight and balance both high and low speed performance. The second-generation configurations take the low-boom and low-drag performance into consideration and employ the highly-swept arrow-wing tailless layout, while the third-generation focuses more on the multi-disciplinary comprehensive performance and the technical feasibility. Almost all these configurations adopt the T-tail or V-tail layout and the engine nacelle knapsack or tail crane layout. The technical bottlenecks and difficulties of the new generation STA conceptual-aerodynamic configuration design are then presented. The progress and state of the art of the conceptual design technology, low-boom design technology, supersonic drag reduction technology, and airframe-propulsion integrated design technology are reviewed. Finally, the development trend of a new-generation STA configuration is discussed, stressing some of the key scientific and technical issues to be broken through. Supersonic business jets or small and medium class STA will be the priority in the near future, with technical features approximating those of the third-generation configurations. Comprehensive performance and engineering realizability of factors such as sonic boom, drag reduction, airframe-propulsion integration, aeroelasticity, and man-machine efficacy should be the mainly concern in future research.

Key words: supersonic transport, conceptual design, low-boom design, supersonic drag reduction, airframe-propulsion integrated design

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