Publications

Designing supersonic transport aircraft requires accounting for performance and stability and high-speed and low-speed conditions. Previous work demonstrated that there is a trade-off between high-speed performance and low-speed stability. Numerical optimization presents the opportunity to obtain the best high-speed performance while enforcing stability at low speeds. We perform RANS-based aerodynamic shape optimization with a component-based geometry parameterization approach that enables the optimization of a complex three-surface supersonic transport configuration. We minimize drag at a supersonic cruise condition both with and without a constraint on subsonic pitch stability. The stability constraint enforces a 5% static margin at a subsonic takeoff condition. We show that shape optimization increases the wing thickness and leading edge radius to design a cranked arrow wing that is stable at subsonic speeds at the cost of a 5.8% increase in supersonic drag.