Relating a Jet-Surface Interaction Experiment to a Commercial Supersonic Transport Aircraft Using Numerical Simulations

摘要

Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations were performed for a commercial supersonic transport aircraft concept. RANS simulations were also performed for hardware models designed to represent the installed propulsion system of the conceptual aircraft in an experimental test campaign. The purpose of the experiment was to determine the effects of jet-surface interactions from supersonic aircraft on airport community noise. RANS simulations of the commercial supersonic transport aircraft concept were performed to relate the representative experimental hardware to the actual aircraft. RANS screening simulations were performed on the proposed test hardware to verify that the two models would be free from potential noise sources not observed on the aircraft and to predict the aerodynamic forces on the model hardware to assist with structural design. The simulations of the concept aircraft showed that the junction regions near the engine nacelles were free from significant areas of separated flow (a potential noise source), even at representative take-off and climb angles of attack. The full-aircraft simulations also showed that the inlet performance was not significantly impacted as the angle of attack was increased. The simulations of the proposed experimental hardware showed that a large region of separated flow formed in a junction region of the center engine configuration. As this was dissimilar to the simulations of the aircraft, the large region of flow separation could invalidate the noise measurements. The center engine configuration was modified and a subsequent RANS simulation showed that the size of the flow separation was greatly reduced. The aerodynamic forces on the experimental models were found to be relatively small when compared to the expected loads from the model's own weight.