Full-Vehicle 3D Metrology for As-Built Flight Simulation of the X-59

Abstract

The X-59 is NASA's quiet supersonic demonstrator, built to show that a low-boom flight envelope could let commercial supersonic travel resume without disturbing the people underneath it. Predicting and controlling its aerodynamic and acoustic behaviour needed the whole airframe captured at high enough fidelity for advanced CFD. Sam Gosiewski describes the campaign: structured-light and laser metrology systems together, more than fifty individual scan sessions analysed in PolyWorks and merged into a single mesh for sonic-boom characterisation – large-scale, high-fidelity measurement pushed about as far as a team and a schedule allow.