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.


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    Title :

    Conceptual design and analysis of blended-wing-body aircraft


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2014-11-01


    Size :

    23 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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