Propagation Analysis Using sBOOM for the Third AIAA Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop

The Third Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop was held on January 4–5, 2020, in conjunction with the AIAA SciTech conference. The workshop had 23 participants who represented 6 different countries and 18 unique organizations that included government, industry, and academia. The workshop was attended by over 50 individuals. The motivation for the workshop stems from the goal of obtaining supersonic commercial overland flight. To replace the current prohibition with a certification standard, an international effort is required to quantify the accuracy and reliability of prediction methods. The workshops also identify deficiencies in existing methods where further research should be focused. The workshop consisted of two days: the first day focused on near-field computational fluid dynamics and the second day on propagation techniques. For the atmospheric propagation portion of the workshop, two required cases and one optional case were prescribed for the participants to exercise their propagation implementations. This paper presents and discusses the results that were obtained using the sonic boom propagation code sBOOM. Results show that sonic boom carpets could be much different under arbitrary atmospheric conditions as opposed to standard atmospheric conditions. Additionally, several unique features when using sBOOM are presented.