Parametric Study of the Hypersonic Near-Field and Sonic Boom from Waveriders using a Fully-Parabolized Approach

A parametric study is performed to understand the relationship between volume displacement, lift, near-field signature, and sonic boom overpressure for variable wedge angle power-law waveriders. The width of a parametric waverider is varied for freestream Mach numbers from 5 to 7. Both near-field and sonic boom predictions are made with a fully parabolized approach. The Upwind Parabolized Navier-Stokes solver is used to spatially march the hypersonic flow-field in the streamwise direction. The waveform parameter method is used to propagate the hypersonic near-field to the ground from a fixed altitude of 15.85 km. We find the magnitude of the SPL varies with frequency as −19.7 log f . There is a positive quasi-linear relationship between near-field and sonic boom overpressures with volume displacement. For M ∞ = 7, a 150% volume increase yields 92.5% and 60.9% rises in near-field and sonic boom overpressures, respectively. The effect of losses due to thermo-viscous effects and atmospheric absorption are quantified. We show that for a waverider of volume ∀ = 4970 cm 3 at M ∞ = 7, these losses, predicted by PCBoom using modules PCBurg and enhanced Burgers’ decrease maximum overpressure by 41.6% and 39.5% relative to WPM, respectively.