7. Reduced Order Computational Methods for the Development of Propulsive Technologies for Supersonic Aviation to Achieve Climate Neutrality

In recent years, supersonic aviation has regained attention by the research community and industrial actors alike. Certainly, the environmental constraints and hypersonic cruise opportunities add new underexplored dimensions. The MORE &LESS consortium builds upon previous European efforts to develop high-speed civil air transportation by assessing a broad spectrum of high-speed flight, ranging from Mach 2 up to Mach 8. There exists no single propulsion concept that is able to power an aircraft over this wide range. This chapter investigates propulsion concepts at both ends of this velocity spectrum. At the low end, this consists of a turbojet with afterburning which powers a Concorde-like airframe. On the high end, a combined cycle engine merges six air-turbo rockets and a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet (DMR) engine to power a waverider concept. The tools used to characterise the engine performance require a high computational efficiency in order to allow for quick design iterations and automated optimisation procedures. Furthermore, to ensure high simulation accuracy without jeopardising computational efficiency, a reduced-order modelling framework built on high-fidelity simulations is used.