Abstract
A blended-wing-body aircraft has the advantages of high lift-to-drag ratio, low noise, and high economy compared with traditional aircraft. It is currently a solution with great potential to become a future civilian passenger aircraft. However, most airplanes with this layout use distributed power, and the power system is on the back of the fuselage, with embedded or back-supported engines. This type of design causes the boundary layer suction effect. The boundary layer ingestion (BLI) effect can fill the wake of the aircraft and improve the propulsion efficiency of the engine. However, it causes huge design difficulties, especially when the aircraft and the engine are strongly coupled. In this paper, an aircraft with a coupled engine configuration is studied. The internal and external flow fields are calculated through numerical simulation. A realistic calculation model is obtained through the coupling of boundary conditions. On the basis of the influence of the external flow on the internal flow under the coupled condition, the influence of the BLI effect on the aerodynamic performance of the fan is investigated.
Highlights
A blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft is a highly viable and promising layout for commercial aircraft [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
A power system with boundary layer ingestion (BLI) effect is placed at the back of the fuselage, and its ejected gas fills the fuselage wake, reducing the mixing loss and differential pressure resistance caused by the speed difference; this condition is beneficial to the aircraft as a whole [14,15,16]
This paper investigates the design of the power fan of an airlift-coupled wingbody fusion aircraft with the BLI effect
Summary
A blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft is a highly viable and promising layout for commercial aircraft [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. For studies concentrating on the performance of fans under deviation, some models, such as parallel pressurizer model and volumetric force model, were used for simplification in previous studies due to the difficulty of directly simulating the deviation and the huge calculation amount of the internal flow field. These models were applied to simplify the calculation while ensuring a certain degree of accuracy. Goldberg et al [18] developed a method to match propulsion system flow and tube flow to simulate the internal flow field under boundary layer inhalation and validated it with NASA’s N3-X model They found that the inlet distortion affected thrust more remarkably than fan efficiency. Overall parameter Cruise altitude (m) Cruise Mach number (Ma) Gliding speed (m/s) Maximum takeoff weight (kg) Cruise lift-to-drag ratio (K)
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