Efforts have been underway to develop a supersonic aircraft having a lower fuselage region capable of morphing. This work designs and optimizes the conformal layer in that region. Supersonic aircraft go through sub-sonic, sonic, and supersonic speeds across variable atmospheric conditions throughout a flight. Each combination of speed and atmospheric condition has a different configuration that minimizes the ground noise generated by the aircraft. The ability to morph between configurations can lessen overall ground noise as measured in Perceived Loudness in Decibels (PLdB). The morphing component of the aircraft is composed of an adaptive five-panel system capable of reconfiguring between two primary states: a specific concave and convex shape. These panels are discrete and rigid with a conformal layer connecting and covering them. The outer surface of the conformal layer works as the outer mold line of the aircraft. A supersonic airflow that changes direction generates pressure waves traveling at the speed of sound. These pressure waves create sonic booms when they converge, drastically increasing ground noise. Minimizing the change in airflow direction over the panel minimizes boom strength. In this work the panel system and conformal layer are modeled using the finite element analysis software Abaqus. The final conformal layer is determined using the genetic algorithm (Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II) considering two objectives. These objectives are to minimize the weighted mean magnitude of the second derivative of the outer mold line in i) the concave and ii) the convex configurations of the adaptive panel system. The best non-dominated design was determined and used as the final design. A testing model was used to construct a prototype. Digital Image Correlation on the prototype was used to validate the Finite Element Analysis testing model. The error between the Finite Element Analysis model and the prototype was found to be small, but not negligible.
