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AOO-39894
AIAA-2000-4335 AERODYNAMIC DESIGN CHALLENGES OF THE BLENDED-WING-BODY SUBSONIC TRANSPORT D. Roman*, J. B. Alien**, and R. H. Liebeck*** The Boeing Company, Long Beach, California
ABSTRACT The aerodynamic design of a Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) aircraft is substantially more complicated than that of a conventional wing. This paper provides an overview of unique design problems faced by the BWB wing designer, discusses the applicability of Navier-Stokes analysis, and summarizes the progress made to date. BACKGROUND Development of the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) concept began with a NASA sponsored study to create a new, more efficient, configuration for subsonic transport aircraft. The initial BWB approach to the challenge sought to improve the aerodynamics by increasing wetted aspect ratio (b2/Swet). For the payload-range specification of 800 passengers and 7000 nautical miles, the BWBconcept evolved from the streamlined-disk plus wing sketch shown in Figure 1, where it is compared with a conventional "tube and wing" configuration. Here both fuselages are sized for the same payload. When joined to identical wings, the increase in wetted aspect ratio offered by the BWB is on the order of 33%. Since the cruise lift-to-drag ratio is linearly related to the square root of the wetted aspect ratio, the configuration offered a substantial improvement in aerodynamic efficiency. Transformation of the conceptual BWB of Figure 1 into a realistic aerodynamic configuration began by assuming a modern aft-cambered outer wing with a reflexed centerbody airfoil for trim. More specifically, the outboard wing was based on supercritical airfoils with divergent trailing edges. The large centerbody chords called for a low lift coefficient to achieve a reasonable spanload. Thus airfoil LW102A was designed for c, = 0.25 and cmc/4 = + 0.03 at M = 0.7 using the method of Reference 1. The resulting section is shown in Figure 2.
MOTU.

Figure 1
*Senior Principal Engineer/Scientist, Senior Member AIAA ** Project Engineer *** Boeing Senior Technical Fellow, Fellow AIAA Copyright 2000 by The Boeing Company. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. with permission.

0.0

0.01

Figure 2
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Blending of the LW102A centerbody airfoils with the supercritical outboard wing sections yielded an aerodynamic configuration with a nearly elliptic spanload. At this early stage of BWB development, the structurally rigid centerbody was assumed to offer "free wingspan". The outer wing geometry was therefore taken directly from a tube and wing transport and "bolted" to the side of the centerbody. The result was a wingspan of 349 feet, a trapezoidal aspect ratio of 12, and a longitudinal static margin of - 15%, implying the requirement for a fly-by-wire flight control system. In response to the concern over the unsweep of the isobars near the centerline, the cockpit section was extended forward. This also accommodated clear view requirements for the flight crew. A 3-view of this "first" BWB is shown in Figure 3. (A description of this original BWB study is given in Reference 2.) Future generations of BWB designs would begin to address the design constraints not observed by this initial concept, but the basic character of the aircraft persists to this day.

wing itself. This constraint can lead to a requirement

for maximum thickness-to-chord ratios as high as 17% in the centerbody region, a value not usually associated with transonic airfoils.

Deck Angle
Since the passenger cabin exists within the wing centerbody, the centerline airfoils must be designed to generate the necessary lift at angle of attacks consistent with cabin deck angle requirements. This requirement suggests incorporation of positive aft camber in the centerline airfoils.
Clean Wing Trim A BWB wing design is considered trimmed when (at the nominal cruise condition) its center-of-pressure corresponds with the specified center-of-gravity location, and each of the trailing edge control surfaces is faired. Trim at stable center-of-gravity locations requires that the nose-down pitching moment be minimized. This restricts the use of positive aft camber and conflicts with the deck angle requirement just mentioned. Secondary Power for Control Surface Actuation The effective tail arms for flying wing type aircraft are small. Tailless aircraft therefore incorporate multiple, large, rapidly moving, trailing-edge control surfaces. Trailing edge devices and winglet rudders are called upon to perform a host of duties including trim, longitudinal and lateral control, pitch stability augmentation, directional control, and wing load alleviation. Besides the daunting challenge of control surface allocation, the wing designer must ensure that control surfaces will perform their function throughout the flight envelope with no adverse performance impact associated with their duties. The mere size of the inboard trailing edge devices requires careful consideration of airfoil design to minimize hinge moments. The hinge moments are related to the control surface size by the square/cube law, that is, size increases by the square of the scale whereas hinge moments increase by the cube of the scale.

Figure 3 OVERVIEW OF BWB DESIGN CONSTRAINTS

Due to its integrated nature, a BWB configuration must satisfy a unique set of design requirements. The

aerodynamic designer is faced with a host of new and challenging constraints.

Volume

Once the hydraulic system is sized to meet the maximum hinge moments, the power required is related only to the rate at which the surfaces move. The secondary power required can easily exceed that currently available from turbofan engines.

First and foremost is the volumetric requirement. Since there is no dedicated fuselage, the passengers, cargo, and systems must be enveloped within the

Because the BWB is both tailless and large, the control surface hinge moments are substantial. If the
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aircraft is unstable and dependent upon active flight

controls, the secondary power required may be prohibitive. It may be necessary to design the aircraft to be stable at cruise, though doing so threatens violation of deck angle constraints. Trimming stable at cruise forces the wing to be washed out and/or trailing edge camber to be reduced, both leading to a loss in lift and a required increase in angle of attack to cruise.
Landing Approach Speed The BWB trailing edge surfaces cannot be used effectively as flaps; the aircraft has no tail to trim the resulting moments. Deflection of the trailing edge surfaces will be determined by trim rather than by maximum lift requirements. Since the maximum lift coefficient of the aircraft will be substantially less than that of a conventional flapped design, the BWB wing loading must be substantially lower. Buffet and Stall Characteristics

Manufacturing

Aerodynamic solutions to other BWB design constraints can result in complex three dimensional shapes that would be extremely difficult and expensive to manufacture. The aerodynamic designer must therefore strive for smooth, simply curved surfaces while attempting to resolve the conflicting constraints summarized above. Other constraints considered proprietary by the Boeing Company also significantly effect the wing design.
FIRST GENERATION CONFIGURATION

Because the outboard airfoils have chords much shorter than the centerbody airfoils, the outboard

Because of the complexity of the task, the aerodynamic design of the BWB has been an evolutionary process. The initial wing design failed to meet most constraints. Within each subsequent design cycle, attention was directed at better meeting a single unresolved constraint, while preserving the previous progress. Today's mature design is the result of many iterations. It meets most (but not yet all) of the design requirements.

airfoils must operate at higher lift coefficients if a

reasonable cruise spanload is to be achieved. Similarly, section lift builds up faster on the outboard wing than on the centerbody section. The outboard sections tend to separate first, and thus buffet characteristics can be poor. Addition of a slat to the outboard wing can lead to substantial improvement for the low-speed, slats-extended configuration. Resolution of the clean wing characteristics problem puts considerable pressure on the wing designer to increase the outboard wing chords and washout. Both attacks tend to degrade the cruise performance.
Landing Approach Attitude

The first-generation BWB design study, again sponsored by NASA, used takeoff gross weight (rather than wetted aspect ratio) as the figure-ofmerit. This resulted in a reduction of the wingspan to 280 feet and a corresponding aspect ratio of 10. A 3view is shown in Figure 4.

Because the BWB high lift system consists of an outboard slat but no flaps, the maximum lift coefficient occurs at a large angle of attack. The flight attitude during approach is correspondingly high.
Propulsion / Airframe Integration The engines are located on the upper surface near the rear of the aircraft centerbody. Because of the interactions among the wing, engines, and control surfaces, the design of this region is exceptionally complex.

Figure 4

The outer wing panels are moderately loaded, and again feature aft-cambered sections with divergent
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trailing edges. As in the first BWB, the very large

chord of the centerbody called for a low section lift coefficient, which in turn permitted a large thickness and trailing edge reflex for pitch trim. Spanwise variation of section lift coefficient and thickness-tochord ratio is shown in Figure 5.

aircraft maintains power as well as pitch, roll, and yaw control throughout the upset.
This first generation BWB configuration study was summarized in Reference 3.

NAVIER-STOKES ANALYSIS
Due to the unconventional nature of the inboard wing
Nano* Wing Chord

airfoils, handbook drag build-up methods based on flat plate friction and empirical form factors simply do not apply. These large, thick airfoils have high closure angles and operate at Reynolds Numbers as large as 300 million. They are not to be found on any design chart. Navier-Stokes analysis, however, is well-suited for this configuration. For preliminary design studies the engines and winglets can be left out of the analysis. Gridding of the wing geometry then becomes a simple task using readily available gridding tools. Excellent accuracy is obtained with under one million grid points and solutions can be computed with one to two days turn around time on HP 9000/780 or Silicon Graphics Octane workstations. With several workstations available, a polar can be constructed in two days.
The NASA-developed Reynolds-averaged NavierStokes code CFL3D (Reference 4) with the Spalart-

Figure 5

An example analysis result at the cruise condition is given in Figure 6. A typical shock is evident on the outer wing. The shock on the centerbody, however, is weak and can, in fact, almost be regarded as a compression wave. The centerbody shock pattern and strength varies little with angle of attack.

Allmaras one-equation turbulence model was selected for most of the BWB design and analysis work. CFL3D was chosen due to the appeal of its upwind differencing scheme. The advantages of upwind differencing are better shock capturing and avoidance of excessive numerical dissipation encountered in central differencing codes. As seen in Figure 7, CFL3D provided better drag estimates than other popular CFD codes at cruise conditions.
Grid
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7

Method

.....E. .... SW.

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Buffet onset begins at the outboard kink region. During a buffet upset, the flow into the engines remains benign, while flow across the centerline and outboard control surfaces remains attached. Thus the
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Figure 7

(c)2000 American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics or Published with Permission of Author(s) and/or Author(s)' Sponsoring Organization.

Coupled to the CDISC inverse design capability developed at NASA Langley, CFL3D proved to be an valuable tool for BWB clean wing design. The measured data shown in Figures 7-10 were collected at the National Transonic Facility (NTF) wind tunnel at the NASA Langley Research Center. (Refer to Reference 5 for a detailed description of the test.) Data were collected at Reynolds Numbers from 3.5 to 25 million (based on the trap wing MAC) at Mach

Since many of the BWB design refinements are guided by pressure distributions, it is encouraging to

see that they are accurately predicted from cruise

through buffet as shown in Figure 10.

o
INBD

NTF OUTBD

numbers from 0.5 to 0.86. The model did not incorporate nacelles. Winglets were added for only a small number of runs.
A primary objective of the test was to demonstrate the

- CFL3D Mid-Cruise f

effectiveness of current state of the art CFD methods

for predicting the aerodynamic characteristics of a BWB configuration. The test results shown in Figure

8 demonstrate that CFL3D provides a good approximation of the measured drag levels at the higher Reynolds number.

Buffet-Onset

1.0

0.0

Figure 10

Figure 8

The lift and pitching moment characteristics shown in Figure 9 are also well predicted up to and beyond buffet onset. The pitching moment break is well defined.

While CFL3D has become the preferred tool for clean wing design efforts, the OVERFLOW code, Reference 6, is preferred for analysis of more complex configurations because of its overlapping grid capability and our experience level with the code. The propulsion-airframe integration effort has, therefore, relied heavily on OVERFLOW analysis.

CURRENT GENERATION CONFIGURATION

C,

Over the past two years a great deal of attention has been given to detailed aerodynamic lines development with particular emphasis on satisfying the varied design requirements mentioned previously. As the configuration evolved from an 850 passenger aircraft to a 450 passenger aircraft, many changes to the planform and airfoil stack were incorporated which provided significant improvements in aircraft aerodynamic performance.
Planform

Figure 9

The planform changes are apparent in Figure 11 where the first and current generation configurations

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are scaled and overlaid. Both the outboard and centerbody wing chords were increased. The outboard chords were increased to improve the buffet onset level and characteristics.
PLANFORM COMPARISON

PITCHING MOMENT COMPARISON M=0.85/35K FT CFL3DV6

Current Ccocratia

_ _ _ First Generation

-- C ... BRF.AK

< MID. CRUISE

- MID. CRUISE

-M

Figure 12

PLANFORM COMPARISON

It is here that any significant separation begins to occur at the wing critical section. Post buffet characteristics can be qualitatively assessed by the severity of the break. The new wing has a comparable to slightly less abrupt break, and is

typical of other Boeing aircraft. It is evident from the

figure that there is a significant improvement in CL margin between cruise and buffet. There is ample protection beyond the FAA required 1.3 g's to buffet on the new wing, whereas the first generation wing could face some problems meeting this requirement at the higher beginning-of-cruise CL'S. The lift curve in Figure 13 shows that the current wing has almost a full two degrees of protection from mid cruise to buffet, almost twice that of the first generation wing.
LIFT CURVE COMPARISON M=0.85/35JC FT CFL3DV6
- Current Gencnuitn

First Generation

Figure 11

- C v, BREAK

Buffet CL tends to be more a function of the structure's response to aerodynamic separation rather than just an aerodynamic phenomenon. For argument's sake, in the absence of any information on structural response, it is assumed that buffet CL is at the lift versus pitching moment curve break as noted in Figure 12.

-MID.CRUISt

/
/<. MID. CRUISE

l.fi

2.0

.VO

4.0

(dcg.)

Figure 13

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The centerbody chords were increased to reduce their thickness-to-chord ratios and afterbody closure angles. Though a significant amount of wetted area was added to the configuration, the increased friction drag was more than offset by the improvement in reduced pressure drag. The improvement to the inboard wing flowfield is evident in Figure 14, which depicts the results of the inboard wing design.

Inboard Sections Redesigned

A new class of airfoils that operate efficiently at transonic speeds was designed given constraints in cross sectional area needed to effectively hold passengers, baggage and cargo. The original approach was to use conventional transonic airfoils and two-dimensional design methods. This lead to excessive thickness-to-chord ratios and associated compressibility drag penalties. Scaling the chord to achieve the desired dimensional thickness but lower thickness ratio lead to excessive wetted area and associated parasite drag. A more efficient way to package the interior was developed through a careful contouring of the upper and lower surfaces of the airfoils. Though of unorthodox contour, the new airfoils were incorporated into the design without a drag penalty. Indeed, the new centerbody airfoils increased the lift-to-drag ratio by 4%. More significantly, the new airfoils smoothed and flattened the geometry to allow less expensive tooling and

manufacture.
All the chordwise pressure distributions on the wing were extensively modified using a NASA Langley developed inverse design capability, CDISC, Reference 7. Using CDISC coupled to CFL3D with specified cabin constraints, pitching moment constraints and spanload constrains allowed for tailoring of the pressures to achieve a smooth distribution with weakened shocks and less aggressive trailing edge pressure recoveries. CDISC however was not able to trim the configuration by front loading the airfoils in an effective, i.e. low drag, manner.
Figure 14

Airfoil Stack
Several advances in airfoil technology and design tools allowed tailoring of the inboard sections, providing the aircraft profile with the cleaner, more streamlined appearance shown in Figure 15.

Trim

The planform and airfoil stack of the current BWB configuration resolves the longitudinal trim problem. The aircraft now trims far more efficiently than previous flying wing aircraft. Historically, flying wings have been trimmed by sweeping the wings and downloading the wingtips. While this approach allows the wingtips to serve the function of a horizontal tail, it imposes a severe induced drag penalty on the aircraft. The induced drag penalty is one of the major reasons that flying wing aircraft have failed to live up to their performance potential. The BWB wing, on the other hand, has been trimmed by a careful distribution of trailing edge camber coupled with a judicious application of wing washout. The result is a flying wing aircraft, trimmed at a stable center-of-gravity, with all control surfaces faired, with no induced drag penalty.

Figure 15

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CFL3D analysis was used extensively here to determine the effectiveness of various trailing edge droop and wing washout schemes. It was determined that there is a unique combination of droop and washout that moves the wing center-of-pressure to a given location with minimum drag impact. This is shown in Figure 16 where the solid lines are estimates derived from CFD sensitivities and solid symbols are actual cases analyzed in CFD with the estimated droop and washout levels.
OPTIMUM TRIM RESULTS
M=0.85 / 35k FT / CRUISE

The above process assures trim with all control surfaces faired for only one cruise CL. The drag penalty for trimming the aircraft throughout the cruise range was assessed using CFD. Deflecting the trailing edge devices a small amount will effectively trim the aircraft throughout the cruise CL range with minimal drag penalty. If the aircraft is designed trimmed at mid cruise CL then the penalty as shown in Figure 17 is only 1.0 count at start-of-cruise (higher CL) to 0.5 counts at end of cruise (lower CL).
CRUISE RANGE TRIM RESULTS M=0.85/35KFT

UNTRIMMED

WING TIP TWIST

A C.P. LOCATION

(%MAC)
OPTIMUM TRIM RESULTS

CRUISE C

RANGE

M=0.85/3Sk FT/CRUISE
ESTIMATED FROM SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS SOLID SYMBOLS ARE COMPUTED RESULTS

CRUISE RANGE TRIM RESULTS M=0.85 / 3SK FT

i(CD)-ICOUNT

4(UD)<1%

-IK

.14

A C.P. LOCATION

(%MAC)

Figure 16

Figure 17

The close correlation attests to the accuracy and applicability of the sensitivity analysis. As seen in the figure the center-of-pressure can be moved significantly without incurring any trim drag penalty. Remarkably, each unique combination leads to identically the same spanload.

SUMMARY
Compared to the first generation BWB wing design, today's design delays buffet onset, improves buffet and stall characteristics, allows the aircraft to be
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trimmed at a stable center-of-gravity location, reduces the secondary power demand, and simplifies the manufacturing process. Significantly, these improvements have been incorporated into the design in conjuction with a 16% increase in lift-to-drag ratio. The improvement is evident in Figure 18 by the level of lower surface pressure coefficients and the

been made in integrating the nacelles, the goal of an interference free installation has not yet been achieved.

complete elimination of the lower surface shock.

COMPARISON OF CHORDWISE PRESSURE DISTRIBUTIONS M=0.85/35K FT/CRUISE
SYMBOL ALPHA L/D

Early BWB concepts envisioned a "mail slot" inlet that would ingest the wing boundary layer. Although aerodynamically preferable, the engines suffered excessive performance penalties due to inlet conditions. This evolved to isolated, submerged engines that ingested the boundary layer, and later to isolated engines that diverted it. These concepts were unacceptable from both an aerodynamic and engine performance perspective.
The current engine integration concept involves mounting the engines on struts, locating the inlets outside the wing boundary layer and aft of the high velocity region of the wing. The limited CFD work that has been done on this concept to date lends confidence that an interference free engine installation is possible.

Cunent Generation 3.870 22.00

............ First Generation

i.no 18.96

Current Generation Upper-surface Isobars

Figure 18

Third, very little attention has been focused on the wing tip/winglet aerodynamic design. Winglets on the BWB act as vertical tails with rudders. The designer must assure that the rudder will function as needed to control the aircraft throughout the flight and rudder deflection envelopes. Currently the winglets offset their parasite drag giving a slight drag improvement, but this can be improved with proper tailoring of winglet planform, airfoil design, twist and wing tip/winglet fairing. Additionally, with design requirements and constraints well defined and with a good starting point, aerodynamic optimization methods coupled to CFD flow solvers can now be implemented to try to improve the wing design. Some work has been done to date with Antony Jameson's SYN88 optimizer (Reference 8) using Euler analysis. Initial results analyzed in CFL3D are very promising and indicate that as much as an additional 5% L/D improvement can be realized.

The new wing more effectively carries the lift with less negative pressure coefficients, leading to compressibility drag reduction. Along with inboard chord extensions, the reduced inboard thickness resulted in significantly smaller airfoil closure angles and a more mild pressure recovery at the trailing edge. This is beneficial for engine installation, putting them in a less accelerated flow field. The elimination of the divergent trailing edge significantly changes the character of the outboard wing. Even with significantly less camber the outboard sections operate at comparable lift coefficients with significantly reduced shock strength.
FUTURE WORK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The original BWB concept was developed under NASA contract NAS1-18763. The NTF testing was conducted in cooperation with NASA under contract number NAS 1-20268. The test was staffed and CFD analysis in support of that test was performed by the Subsonic Transport Aerodynamic Technology Group at The Boeing Phantom Works in Long Beach. The

Future aerodynamic design efforts will continue in several areas. First, while the wing meets most of the design constraints, it does not yet meet all of them. Deck angle and secondary power issues are yet to be resolved. Second, while substantial progress has

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authors would like to thank all involved for their efforts.

5.

REFERENCES
1. Liebeck, R. EL, "Design of Subsonic Airfoils for High Lift", AIAA Journal of Aircraft, September 1978.
Liebeck, R. H., Page, M. A., Rawdon, B. K., Scott, P. W. and Wright, P. A., "Concepts for Advanced Subsonic Transports", NASA Contractor Report 4624, September 1994. Liebeck, R. H., Page, M. A. and Rawdon, B. K, "Blended-Wing-Body Subsonic Commercial

Pelkman, R. A., "Key Findings and Conclusions from an NTF Wind Tunnel Test of an Initial Blended-Wing-Body Concept", NASA Contract NAS1-20268, Boeing Report No. CRAD-9402TR-3985, August 1998. http://hpcc.arc.nasa.gov/insights/vol5/ overflow.htm

6.

2.

7.

Campbell, R. L., "Efficient Viscous Design of Realistic Aircraft Configurations", AIAA-982539, June 1998.
Jameson, A., "Re-Engineering the Design Process through Computation", AIAA-97-0641, January 1997.

3.

8.

Transport", AIAA- 98-0438, January 1998.

4. http://fmad-www.larc.nasa.gov:80/~biedron/ Cfl3dv6/cfl3dv6_home.htrnl#general

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