Multidisciplinary pre-design of supersonic aircraft

Forecasts predict a strong market for supersonic travel in the business sector. It is especially appealing for high-net-worth individuals because of both, the reduction of travel time and prestige. The ecological and economic challenges that are related to supersonic flight need adequate answers in terms of technology and tools to evaluate aircraft for the described task. This paper gives a short overview on research that has been conducted in the past, followed by the presentation of the work done by the authors. The integration of methods for the evaluation of supersonic business jets in the context of aircraft conceptual design is outlined. The determination of aerodynamic coefficients and loads is done by solving the inviscid Euler equations. Furthermore the propulsion module is extended and a mission analysis tool, which is used for fuel mass estimation is briefly explained. The methods for structural analysis are detailed. At the end the verification based on a reference configuration is described. © 2014, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.