Abstract: Sonic boom has become the most critical technology limiting civil aircraft's supersonic flight over land. To realize sonic boom reduction for supersonic aircraft, thus making supersonic flight over land available, will bring a huge potential market. Based on the SGD (Seebass-George-Darden) method, a procedure involving inverse design has been set up, which allows for complete analysis of lower sonic boom and aerodynamic performance. A "shuttle" configuration is developed for the first time. The results reveal that the proposed "shuttle" configuration achieves a better balance between the design demands of lower sonic boom and aerodynamic performance. Both balanced deployment of lifting surface along the longitudinal direction of the fuselage and double S-shaped design of the front body can contribute to the sonic boom reduction, providing a useful reference for designing next-generation high-speed civil transport with low sonic boom.

Key words: supersonic aircraft, sonic boom, acoustic wave propagation, aerodynamic configurations, shockwaves, inverse kinematic