Ascent Trajectory Optimization Considering the Sonic Boom

Abstract

Optimal flight trajectories of a supersonic transport are investigated to reduce the effect of sonic boom. By developing a sonic boom predicting program, cost functions are formulated to evaluate the effect of sonic boom to a terminal area model. The cost functions are tried to minimize by the numerical optimization method which utilizes the simulated annealing techniques named the Hide and Seek method combined with the R-Tabu search algorithm. The proposed optimization method has the capability in finding the global minimum without gradient information. The computed results indicate the efficient accent trajectories by considering both the weighted integration of the sonic boom intensity and the maximum value of the intensity.