DLR TAU Near-Field Simulations for the Third AIAA Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop

The accurate prediction of the sonic boom is essential for the development of a future low-boom supersonic aircraft. In this paper, the best practice for predicting near-field pressure signatures with the DLR TAU code is applied for geometries and grids provided by the third AIAA Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop. The near-field part of the workshop provided two cases, the biconvex case and the NASA C608 case. Both geometries were analyzed by DLR. The biconvex case is used to study shock–plume interactions and the NASA C608 case is used to assess the status of near-field simulations for a realistic low- boom flight demonstrator. Results for the DLR TAU simulations on the workshop-provided grids are presented for different grid refinement levels using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations. In addition to the provided grids, a setup for mixed-element grids with varying setups is described. The predicted near-field signatures agree very well with other workshop participants’ results and wind-tunnel data