Abstract
The requirements of increasing air traffic volume while enhancing its sustainability for the next generation of air transportation demand a step change in aircraft performance, for which the development and technology escalation of ultra-high aspect ratio wings configurations is one key enabling strategy. However, compared with conventional aircraft, the ultra-high aspect ratio wings structure bears higher loads, which poses challenges to aircraft configuration design and related technologies. This paper describes the twin-fuselage (TF) concept as one of the promising configurations adopting ultra-high aspect ratio wings. A methodology of conceptual design and analysis framework for TF transport aircraft is developed by improving and integrating several methods and tools. A medium-range TF transport aircraft is designed, and a sensitivity analysis is carried out to explore the design space, and multidisciplinary design optimization is used to optimize the configuration of the TF transport aircraft. The results show a significant advantage of TF configuration over the conventional cantilever configuration, which presents reductions of 29.33% and 33.60% in the fuel consumption and maximum takeoff weight, respectively.
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