Blended Wing Body

This an important chart for my article here, so i would like to start with this chart here. Here we could make out that this is a set of datas for the year 2000 and year 2050. This is an illustration of our goal as an aviation industry to minimize the affects of aviation emission to the world. 

B787                                          B777

Lets move on to the most recent variants of Boeing(2008)- Boeing 787 and 777. The latest and greatest of Boeing has a reduction of 12% CO2 and 35% reduction in NOx. With this trend the goals for 2050 are difficult to realize. Having said that i would like to be optimistic and say that this goal is possible. 

To base my case, i would like to direct your focus on the 2 big leaps in the field of aviation. If you see a chart of development in the field of aviation you will see two jumps made. One is with the introduction of Fly by wire system and another is introduction of jet engines. So these 2 technologies helped the field of aviation to accelerate the performance and reach of an aircraft. 

Fly by wire                                jet engine

Now this is high time that we make the 3rd Leap. What do we need to make this 3rd leap?

To realize the goals for 2050. we need in the one hand- novel technologies like boundary layer ingestion, active load eliveation, active flow control etc. On the other hand we also need novel aircraft configuration.

When we hear big companies like Airbus and Boeing has unvealed its new aircraft, the only thing new is the efficiency of different system, some minor changes in the length of the fuselage of the wing span. That is not what i mean when i say novel aicraft configuration. What i mean here is something new, moving on with the Tube and Wing configuration that we had since the birth of aviation.

So, today i am gonna briefly explain one of the possibilites of novel aicraft that can help us make the 3rd leap. And this aircraft is called Blended Wing Body - as the title already says. 

With this article i would try to answer couple of questions:

1. What are BWB aircraft?

2. Why are they important?

3. Why dont we see them in our daily life?

Lets begin with the 1st question here. To understand what BWB is, lets understand what BWB is not.

1. conventional aircraft configuration (Tube and Wing configuration)

2. BWB

3. Hybrid Flying Wing

4. Flying Wing

Here we can also add other configuration like conard but i would like to believe these here are more relevant to the article and would move on with this. 

So, what BWB design is, is a combination of 1 and 2. So by defination: they are the configuration without a differentiating line between a fuselage and wing. So it is a blend of wing and the body fuselage, hence Blended Wing Body.

Lets move on to the 2nd question. BWB are one of the important ideas. And this idea is not something new.

                               

Westland Dreadnought  1924 UK                            YB 49 1947  USA 

as you can see here the idea of bwb design was invisioned long back in the early 1900's. So this is not something that was thought of in a recent days. However these aircrafts could not be realized and implimented to the fullest because of the technical limitations at that period. But now the horizon has grown to such point that such aircrafts can be realized and are being realized. 

Among the many benifits of BWB i would like mention some of the most important.

1. offers spacious cabin design

2. reduces fuel emission by upto 80%

3. lowers noise pollution by 32 dB

other benefits worth mentioning are:

a) unlike conventional aircrafts where most of the lifting is done by the wing and fuselage has a minor role in generating lift. In BWB design, the fuselage itself generates a lot of lift.

b) the tail size can be drastically reduced as the whole fuselage can produce

 

However we dont see such aircrafts in our daily aviation. This is because there are a lot of challenges regarding this particular design.

BWB design is a new concept which has not been tested to the market. And on top of that the BWB is suited for bigger aircrafts and not so much for the smaller aircrafts. If we want to launch such new AC design and also in such scale then it contains a huge risk factor.

another important challenge is the passanger discomfort during roll. As the seating arrangement of the aircrafts is distributed along the span the person sitting near to the window will experience a bigger discomfort. Here is a picture illustrating the idea.

the passangers in the seating 'b' will have discomfort during roll, as there will be a more seesaw effect to 'b' as compared to 'a'. The reason being that the 'b' is further away from the axis of rotation.

Another challenge that seem to be a minor one is evacuation time. This is something that at first glance seems trivial, but in civil aviation safety is the top priority, this is the are where the FAA and EASA are very strickt. The aircraft should be so designed that the evacuation process requires less or equal to 90 seconds including the crewmembers.

Having said that, there are many researches all around the world trying to tackle such challenges. However, is BWB design the only method to make the 3rd Leap? Offcourse not. there are other way like use of Hybrid electric aircrafts and Fully electric aircrafts. 

        

And in the field of aviation the research works are always on aircrafts that are planned for the far future, so i cannot gurantiee that we will be seeing such aircrafts in 2-3 years but rather 10 to 20 years. However i believe the science is in the right direction with BWB and we will find the solution to the afore mentioned Challenges. And we will live to experience this kind of aircraft within our lifespan. :)