Assessing the Performance and Climate Effects of Future Supersonic Transport
Mathijs den Boer (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Joris Melkert – Mentor (TU Delft - Flight Performance and Propulsion)
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Abstract
In recent years a return of supersonic transportation has begun with companies looking to launch supersonic aircraft in the coming decade. However, supersonic environmental regulations are still based on Concorde. This thesis looks to predict the performance of new supersonic aircraft for ICAO through a low-fidelity program with a set of climate related modules. The end result is a program capable of producing supersonic aircraft designs with good accuracy, and includes LTO cycle, global climate impact, and CO2 certification analyses. Five aircraft are produced and their performance is evaluated to determine what can be expected of them. The results show that supersonic aircraft can often meet the most stringent CAEP8 LTO regulations, but exceed the new CO2 regulations by over 50%. Additionally, the climate impact of a supersonic fleet is at least twice as large as that of an equivalent subsonic fleet. Based on these findings further investigations are advised.