Contrail aging of a supersonic aircraft using a RANS/LES approach

In the context of increasing globalisation and needs for shortening time travel, the development of new supersonic aircrafts is a strongly considered possibility. Their standards have yet to be defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The SENECA project (“noiSe and EmissioNs of supErsoniC Aircraft”) aims at developing supersonic aircrafts, investigating the impact of specifical supersonic engine technologies on the aircraft performance and noise, providing aircraft fuel burn and emitted CO2 data and engine emission indices for NOx, CO, HC, SOx and soot and quantifying a range of climate impacts of supersonic aviation. The objective of this study is to model and characterize the condensation trails (contrails) due to an original supersonic aircraft configuration during cruise using the CEDRE software from ONERA. First, the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology associated with a mesh adaptation process using feflo.a from INRIA is presented. Then, the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation results for the contrail formation (jet phase, t ~ 1s) are detailed, with a focus on both aerodynamics and microphysics aspects. Finally, the contrail aging up to 2 min is modelled using a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach, and the contrail intrinsic characteristics obtained for the specific E-19 Aeolus’s supersonic aircraft are analysed.