NASA's aeronautical innovators are one step closer to confidently crafting a viable commercial airliner that can fly faster than the speed of sound, yet produce a sonic boom that is quiet enough not to bother anyone on the ground below.
The key to this recent advance came when wind tunnel tests of scale model airplanes verified that new approaches to designing such aircraft would work as hoped for when aided by improved computer tools, which were used for the first time together in each step of the design process.
"That was really the breakthrough for us. Not only that the tools worked, but that our tests show we could do even better in terms of reducing noise than we thought at the start of the effort," said Peter Coen, NASA's supersonic project manager at Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Nuisance noise generated by a commercial supersonic jet's sonic booms during cruise, and by its powerful engines at takeoff and landing, has kept the speedy aircraft from entering service in the United States - except for Europe's Concorde, which was limited to trans-Atlantic flights only.
Using the computer tools, teams led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and funded through a NASA Research Announcement, came up with designs for two small supersonic airliners that would carry between 30 and 80 passengers and potentially enter service in the 2025 timeframe.
For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/sonic_boom_thump.html
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