US Patent 7252263 Design methods and configurations for supersonic aircraft

Methods for configuring aircraft that may be implemented to integrate aircraft sonic boom constraint requirements with the design process for a supersonic aircraft, for example, to reconcile a target sonic boom constraint with the internal layout and balance of the aircraft during the design phase. The disclosed methods may advantageously be employed in one embodiment to allow a sonic boom-constrained aircraft design configuration solution to be reached that incorporates a desired sonic boom signature with the requirements of an internal configuration layout. Resulting aircraft configurations may be usefully employed for achieving sonic boom suppression on any type of supersonic-capable aircraft, for example, a civil supersonic business aircraft.