Rockwell Collins gets NASA contract to study sonic booms

Rockwell Collins has received a two-year contract from NASA to develop a conceptual cockpit display of a sonic boom over land to help lessen its impact on populated areas.

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center will lead the research, working with Rockwell Collins' Advanced Technology Center in Cedar Rapids.

The findings will be applied in NASA's High Speed Project, which is aimed at providing the research and leadership to enable development of a new generation of supersonic commercial aircraft.

'In order for supersonic travel over land to happen, pilots will need an intuitive display interface that tells them where the aircraft's sonic boom is occurring,” John Borghese, vice president, Advanced Technology Center for Rockwell Collins, said in a news release.

'Our team of experts will investigate how best to show this to pilots in the cockpit and develop guidance to most effectively modify the aircraft's flight path to avoid populated areas or prevent sonic booms.”

A sonic boom is the explosive sound of a shock wave produced by an aircraft traveling at or above the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion.

Borghese said Rockwell Collins will leverage its avionics display technologies and advanced human factors research team to develop the sonic boom cockpit display. Ground-based and aircraft-measured weather information will be integrated into the sonic boom display's software to compute the best flight path for an aircraft.