Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimisation of Supersonic Transport Aircraft Wing Planforms

Despite the recent end of scheduled Concorde services, the European industry continues its interest in supersonic civil transport aircraft technology. The potential of an aircraft cruising in the, relatively unknown, low-supersonic range between Mach 1.3 and 2.0 is explored. To support these investigations, a Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimisation (MDAO) framework for optimisation of supersonic wing planforms is build. The analysis disciplines comprise aerodynamics, structural mechanics, propulsion and ight mechanics. The optimisation objective is to obtain maximum aircraft range at xed take-o weight with multiple constraints limiting the design space. The system is applied to aircraft cruising at Mach numbers 2.0, 1.6 and 1.3. The lower-Mach number designs tend towards clipped delta wings and yield increased range performance relative to the Mach 2.0 aircraft. The present paper focuses on the development of the various analysis models underlying the MDAO framework.