Flight Plan Modification for Focus Boom Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Supersonic vehicles generate sonic booms that cause damage and disturbance, and existing systems struggle to adjust flight plans to avoid focus booms, which are intensified by maneuvers and geographic features, leading to restrictions on supersonic operations.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that receive speed, altitude, and flight path data to identify maneuvers generating focus booms and adjust speed, altitude, attitude, and turn radius to minimize or avoid sonic booms, using processors to update the flight plan based on permissible threshold boom values.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If supersonic vehicles perform maneuvers (pushovers, acceleration, turns) to optimize flight path, then flight efficiency and speed are improved, but focus booms are generated causing structural damage and noise disturbances
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of the flight path to identify potential focus boom locations before the vehicle reaches them. By calculating boom footprints and identifying intersection points in advance, the system can proactively adjust flight parameters (altitude, speed, attitude) to avoid generating focus booms, rather than reacting after damage occurs
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically changes flight parameters (altitude, speed, attitude, turn radius) to avoid focus boom generation. By adjusting these parameters based on real-time analysis of boom footprint intersections and geographic features, the system maintains supersonic operation while preventing harmful focus booms
2Object-affected harmful factors
If flight plans are adjusted to avoid focus booms by modifying maneuvers, then harmful effects are reduced, but flight plan complexity and adjustment requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system is self-regulating, automatically analyzing flight path data, identifying focus boom risks, and generating corrective maneuvers without external intervention. The autonomous nature of the system reduces the need for complex external control mechanisms while effectively managing sonic boom impacts
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors flight parameters and boom footprint intersections, using this feedback to dynamically adjust the flight plan. This closed-loop control enables the system to adapt to changing conditions and maintain compliance with sonic boom restrictions without requiring overly complex predetermined flight plans
3Object-affected harmful factors
If minimum altitude requirements are enforced to reduce sonic boom intensity, then boom strength is reduced, but flight time and operational efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of enforcing uniform minimum altitude restrictions across entire flight paths, the system applies localized altitude adjustments only in specific areas where focus booms would occur. By targeting corrections to boom footprint intersection zones rather than the entire route, the system maintains low altitudes (and thus short flight times) while still preventing harmful focus booms in critical areas
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables efficient adjustments to flight plans to minimize or avoid sonic and focus booms, ensuring compliance with sonic boom restrictions and reducing environmental impact.
Implementation Method 1
Supersonic vehicles, for example, supersonic aircraft, generate a sonic boom when traveling faster than the speed of sound
Implementation Method 2
geographic features of the ground, such as hills, valleys, and mountains, can reflect shock waves of the sonic boom, which may increase the intensity of the sonic boom
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are methods, systems, and a non-transitory computer-readable medium for modifying a flight plan of a vehicle. The method may include identifying a maneuver of a flight path that will generate a focus boom, based on received flight path data and permissible threshold boom values for locations along a boom footprint of the maneuver, and generating an adjustment to at least one of a speed, an altitude, an attitude, a location, and a turn radius of the maneuver based on the received data and the permissible threshold boom values. In addition, the method may include updating the flight plan based on the generated adjustment to the at least one of the speed, the altitude, the attitude, the location, and the turn radius of the at least one maneuver.