CISAP: Cruise Speed Impact on Supersonic Aircraft Planform; a Project Overview

Abstract

Defining and executing the EREA - Airbus project called "CISAP", reflects continued interest of European industry in supersonic flight technology. CISAP reads "Cruise speed impact on Supersonic Aircraft planform" and the project addresses mainly two topics: first the development, set-up and verification of several mixed fidelity multiple-discipline optimization (MDO) processes and secondly the application of these processes to optimize wing planforms of Supersonic Commercial Transports (SCT) for maximum range at different supersonic cruise Mach-numbers. This is how the impact of the cruise Mach number on the aircraft planform and the overall aircraft performance is demonstrated. Datum configurations to start the MDO design work from are defined using conceptual design methods for two lower cruise Mach numbers. The configurations transporting 250 passengers are designed for a target range of 5500 nautical miles and a fixed maximum take-off weight. Applying different MDO methods within CISAP to maximize the range of the datum configurations leads to significant planform changes of all aircraft. The computed multiple discipline performance increases show large benefits for aircraft flying at lower supersonic Mach numbers. The experience gained while applying these processes indicates further optimization potential of the designed configurations as well as modelling improvements of the developed MDO processes.