Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft

TLDR

Civil aviation faces rapid growth and environmental challenges, and while the optimized Tube‑And‑Wing design has reached its limits, the Blended‑Wing‑Body concept offers a promising alternative that can reduce noise, emissions, and fuel burn. This study reviews the historical progress of critical technologies for Blended‑Wing‑Body conceptual design and proposes areas for future research. The authors analyze the challenges of integrating propulsion systems with the airframe in BWB designs. The study finds that BWB aerodynamic efficiency scales with mean aerodynamic chord and wetted aspect ratio, requires trade‑offs among stability, control, and low‑speed performance, that non‑cylindrical pressurized cabin structures pose significant weight risks, recommends a static stability criterion, and shows energy‑to‑revenue ratios 31.5–40% higher than Tube‑And‑Wing configurations.

Abstract

Civil aviation faces great challenges because of its robust projected future growth and potential adverse environmental effects. The classical Tube-And-Wing (TAW) configuration following the Cayley's design principles has been optimized to the architecture's limit, which can hardly satisfy the further requirements on green aviation. By past decades' investigations the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) concept has emerged as a potential solution, which can simultaneously fulfill metrics of noise, emission and fuel burn. The purpose of the present work is to analyze the developments of critical technologies for BWB conceptual design from a historical perspective of technology progress. It was found that the high aerodynamic efficiency of BWB aircraft can be well scaled by the mean aerodynamic chord and wetted aspect ratio, and should be realized with the trade-offs among stability and control and low-speed performance. The structure concepts of non-cylinder pressurized cabin are of high risks on weight prediction and weight penalty. A static stability criterion is recommended and further clear and adequate criteria are required by the evaluations of flying and handling qualities. The difficulties of propulsion and airframe integration are analyzed. The energy to revenue work ratios of well-developed BWB configurations are compared, which are 31.5% and 40% better than that of TAW, using state-of-art engine technology and future engine technology, respectively. Finally, further study aspects are advocated.