Conceptual Design of a Blended-Wing-Body for a Short/Medium Range Mission Enhanced by High-Fidelity Aerodynamics

Abstract

The ambitious goals of Flightpath 2050 [1] for a sustainable air transport are being pursued by several pro-jects. In the European Clean Sky 2 project NACOR (New innovative Aircraft Configurations and Related issues), ONERA and DLR collaboratively investigate the potential of innovative unconventional aircraft architectures to reduce fuel consumption for two specific design missions, i.e. short-medium range and business jet. A downselection process is defined, which aims at gradually reducing the number of different aircraft architectures, while increasing the fidelity of the employed analysis methods. Previous findings of the analysed configurations for both missions were presented by M. IWANIZKI et al. [2]. Therein, the activities of the conceptual aircraft design phase, including initial high-fidelity (HiFi) studies, are described in detail. This paper summarizes the work and results related to the blended-wing-body (BWB) configuration. During the course of NACOR, this configuration was identified to be most promising to achieve the goals of reduced environmental impact of air transportation in the future at short and medium range missions. For the overall aircraft design (OAD), a multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) process has been set up. Additionally, the process is enhanced by HiFi aerodynamic data. The HiFi aerodynamic studies comprised the optimization of the wing twist distribution and the airfoil shape of the BWB configuration. The corresponding performance data has been applied to the OAD process for the calibration of the aerodynamic methods of lower fidelity, which are typically employed at the conceptual design stage. The results are compared to a A320 - Baseline configuration (with assumed incremental technological improvement in the year 2035) and show an overall block fuel reduction by up to 10.3 %. The paper will describe the design methodology and the results obtained from the calibration of LoFi and HiFi aerodynamic results as well as the overall results of the BWB sizing process.