AFRL/NASA Shaped Sonic Boom Experiment Flight Test Program. Delivery Order 0021: Origins and Overview of the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration Program

Abstract

The goal of the DARPA Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration (SSBD) Program was to demonstrate for the first time in flight that sonic booms can be substantially reduced by incorporating specialized aircraft shaping techniques. Although mitigation of the sonic boom via specialized shaping techniques was theorized decades ago, until now this theory had never been tested with a flight vehicle subjected to actual flight conditions in a real atmosphere. The demonstrative success, which occurred on 27 August 2003 with repeat flights in the supersonic corridor at Edwards Air Force Base, is a critical milestone in the development of next-generation supersonic aircraft that could one day fly unrestricted over land and help usher in a new era of time-critical air transport. Pressure measurements obtained on the ground and in the air confirmed that the specific modifications made to a Northrop Grumman F-5E aircraft not only changed the shape of the shock wave signature emanating from the aircraft, but also produced a "flat-top" signature whose shape persisted, as predicted, as the pressure waves propagated through the atmosphere to the ground. This accomplishment represents a major advance towards reducing the startling and potentially damaging noise of a sonic boom. This paper describes the evolution of the SSBD program, including the rationale for test article selection, and provides an overview of the history-making accomplishments achieved during the SSBD effort, as well as the follow-on AFRL/NASA Shaped Sonic Boom Experiment (SSBE) Program, whose goal was to further evaluate the characteristics and robustness of shaped boom signatures. The report includes 23 briefing charts that summarize its content.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA440153

Entities

People

  • Charles H. Boccadoro
  • David H. Graham
  • Domenic J. Maglieri
  • Joseph W. Pawlowski
  • Peter G. Coen

Organizations

  • Northrop Grumman

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aeronautics
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Aircraft Design
  • Aircraft Industry
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Pressure Measurement
  • Remotely Piloted Vehicles
  • Shock Waves
  • Sonic Boom
  • Supersonic Aircraft
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Wind Tunnel Models
  • Wind Tunnels

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Aviation Science / Aeronautics.
  • Combustion Dynamics and Shock Wave Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Hypersonics
  • Hypersonics - Hypersonic Flow