Conceptual design and analysis of blended-wing-body aircraft

Abstract

Due to the unconventional nature of the blended wing body (BWB) no off-the-shelf software package exists for its conceptual design. This study details a first step towards the implementation of traditional and BWB-specific design and analysis methods into a software tool to enable preliminary sizing of a BWB. The tool is able to generate and analyze different BWB configurations on a conceptual level. This paper investigates three different BWB configurations. The first configuration is an aft-swept BWB with aft-mounted engines, the second configuration is an aft-swept BWB with wing-mounted engines and the third configuration is a forward-swept BWB with wing-mounted engines. These aircraft comply with the same set of top-level requirements and airworthiness requirements. Each of the designs has been optimized for maximum harmonic range, while keeping its maximum take-off weight constant and identical. Results show that the forward-swept configuration with wing-mounted engines has the highest harmonic range. These findings warrant further investigation in this configuration and other alternative BWB configurations.