Creation and Validation of Early Stage Conceptual Design Methodology for Blended WingBody Aircraft

Abstract: The current design paradigm for developing tube-and-wing style aircraft has been well documented in literature. This research attempts to develop and val-idate a similar design methodology to what is presently utilized for tube-and-wing based aircraft, but has so far not been successfully implemented for the blended wing-body. This construction has no clear distinction between the lift generating surfaces and the cargo carrying structure. The methodology that was developed included the concatenation and validation of low-fidelity, low speed and low complexity aerodynamic models in order to allow for quick and simple analysis of a large number of possible geometries. This enables the user eÿciently determine the most promising candidate geometries for further study and/or development. Known issues with the low velocity and low com-plexity aerodynamic models include the absence of shock wave modelling, an important part in determining the aerodynamic performance of a lift generat-ing surface. The result of this work is the creation and documentation of a procedure for early-stage design of a blended wing-body airframe. However, due to convergence issues with the high-fidelity CFD solver, the methodology could not been validated for transonic flow. It can thus be only considered valid for flow velocities for which the Prandtl-Glauert correction is valid.