Blended Wing Body Architecting and Design: Current Status and Future Prospects

Fixed-wing aircraft are viewed as no longer satisfying our needs today. In the past ten years, fuel efficiency and noise reduction have become the two biggest challenges for aircraft manufacturers. The recognition spurred aerospace engineers and system architects to come up with the Blended Wing Body (BWB), a new design for next generation aircraft. In this paper, we discuss the development of BWB from the perspective of design challenges that system architects and engineers faced during the design process, the architecting heuristics employed, and the rationale for design decision. In addition, body material and shape selection procedures, flight simulation, design optimization, and the advantages of the resultant design are also addressed. Thereafter, we look down the line and discuss the evaluation of emergence technologies on BWB aircraft subsystems, and a model for evaluating technology upgrade.