Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2019), 32(8): 1797–1827

Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics

& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
cja@buaa.edu.cn
www.sciencedirect.com

Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual

design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
Zhenli CHEN a,*, Minghui ZHANG a, Yingchun CHEN a,b, Weimin SANG a,
Zhaoguang TAN b, Dong LI a, Binqian ZHANG a

a
School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
b
Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd, Shanghai 201210, China

Received 20 March 2019; revised 30 March 2019; accepted 23 May 2019

Available online 16 July 2019

KEYWORDS Abstract Civil aviation faces great challenges because of its robust projected future growth and
Aerodynamic design; potential adverse environmental effects. The classical Tube-And-Wing (TAW) configuration follow-
Bended-wing-body; ing the Cayley’s design principles has been optimized to the architecture’s limit, which can hardly
Propulsion Airframe satisfy the further requirements on green aviation. By past decades’ investigations the Blended-
Integration; Wing-Body (BWB) concept has emerged as a potential solution, which can simultaneously fulfill
Stability and control; metrics of noise, emission and fuel burn. The purpose of the present work is to analyze the devel-
Structure opments of critical technologies for BWB conceptual design from a historical perspective of tech-
nology 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 eval-
uations 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.
Ó 2019 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhenlichen@nwpu.edu.cn (Z. CHEN).
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
Rapid increasing demands of civil aviation are driven by the
high-speed transport requirements of growing middle class,
global economic growth and urbanization.1 With growing
urbanization, there is a greater demand to connect the world’s
cities. Since 1990, air transportation has grown at a fast

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2019.06.006
1000-9361 Ó 2019 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1798
around 5% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), and is
resilient to external shocks.
The global commercial market forecasts of different com-
panies (Airbus, Boeing and Commercial Aircraft Corporation
of China (COMAC) indicate robust growth of civil aviation at
a rate around 4.5% in the next 20 years, as shown in Table 1.2-4
As a result, the passenger number and global fleet will be dou-
bled to 8 billion and 48000 aircrafts, respectively, till 2037. The
market will be dominated by the Asia Pacific region. Although
the number of wide-body aircraft is not large, the value is more
than 40%.
The expanded and rising demand poses the long-term chal-
lenges in efficiency, safety and environmental sustainability of
aviation.5 In terms of adverse environmental impact, aviation
transport produces noise, particles, chemical product emis-
sions and contrail formation. The predicted robust growth of
civil aviation will bring much more pressure on the global
warming. The current consensus is that the commercial avia-
tion currently contributes about 2–3% of the carbon dioxide
(CO2) produced by human (anthropogenic CO2 emissions).
However, the total effect on global warming is probably more
like 3–5% when taking into account the effects of oxides of
nitrogen from combustion and of contrail cirrus by cloud for-
mation.6,7 If the business is as usual, the impact of aviation
emission on the climate change will grow fast as the commer-
cial air travel grows.
Therefore, it is urgent to limit and to reduce environment
impact of aviation by legislation, new infrastructure and flight
management, introduction of new highly effective aircrafts and
adoptions of advanced low-emission technologies. To increase
the environmental adaptability of conventional aircraft by
technical evolution, it would become eventually prohibitively
expensive and lead to high risk on sustainable aviation. A
major step forward cannot be achieved without vast investiga-
tions and a radical change of the aircraft concept. To reduce
the impact of aviation on the climate, an alternative new gen-
eration of airliners is highly expected.
To limit the adverse environmental impact of aviation, the
International Air Transport Association (IATA) expressed a
strongly expected resolution. The International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO) updated more stringent regulations on
aircraft noise and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emission and intro-
duced two completely new regulations on carbon dioxide
(CO2) and non-volatile Particulate Matter (nvPM) emissions.8
To enable sustainable growth and address climate change, in
the IATA’s resolution, it calls for a 1.5% average annual fuel
efficiency improvement between 2010 and 2020, carbon neutral
growth from 2020 onward, and a reduction of 50% in net
emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.9 The new standard
on aircraft CO2 certification is to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from the air transport system. It is the first global
Table 1 Market prediction of civil aviation in next 20 years (2018–2037).
Company CAGR of RPK* (%) Passenger aircraft/Value (billion $)
2
Airbus 4.4 36563/5603
Boeing3 4.7 41750/6070
COMAC4 4.46 42702/5765
RPK* = Revenue Passenger Kilometers.
Z. CHEN et al.
technology standard for CO2 emissions for any sector with
the aim of encouraging more fuel efficient technologies into
aircraft designs. The recommended CO2 standard has been
developed at the aircraft level, and therefore has considered
all technologies associated with the aircraft design including
propulsion, aerodynamics and structures.10 However, the reg-
ulations themselves are not driving technology advancements.
The environmental regulations continue to be tightened but
do so in a way that keeps up with technology advancement,
which still can stimulate the investments of industries and gov-
ernments. To satisfy the regulations and gradually realize the
green aviation, the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis-
tration (NASA) of United States of America (USA) and the
Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe
(ACARE) had promoted systematic and adaptive metrics on
noise, NOx emissions of landing and takeoff (LTO) and fuel
burn, as shown in Table 2.11-15
To realize these objectives, the regulations, operations and
new technology adoptions are required and expected. USA
and European Union (EU) have implemented continuing large
scale projects on new key enabling technologies. NASA has
fundamental aviation research program,16 Subsonic Fixed
Wing (SFW) research program, Environmentally Responsible
Aviation (ERA) and subsequent New Aviation Horizons
(NAH). In EU the joint adventure of clean sky I has been fin-
ished and the clean sky II program will be implemented until
2026.17 As developing new technologies for new generation
Highly effective aircraft requires substantial time and
resources, it takes a long time for new technologies to propa-
gate into and through the aviation fleet. Whereas fuel effi-
ciency and noise reduction can come from technologies of
both airframe and propulsion systems, LTO NOx emission
reduction can only be directly achieved through propulsion
technology advancements, which is aimed at the reduction of
harmful productions per unit weight of the fuel burnt.
It is hard to realize the objectives set by ICAO on CO2
emission of net zero increasing on 2020 and of half-reduction
on 2050. In recent researches, through different scenarios, it
was shown that current technologies and evolutionary
improvements will not keep pace with many of these growing
challenges, nor will new technologies and concepts satisfy the
expectations of IATA’s resolution.18,19 Even so, new concepts
and game-changing technologies will be needed to capture the
opportunities of the future, and this is an alternative way. To
ultimately realize industry innovation, long-term stable aero-
nautics researches are required.
The classical Tube-And-Wing (TAW) configuration follows
the Cayley’s design principles that the forms follow the func-
tions, i.e., a cylinder fuselage providing volume, a wing gener-
ating lift, the horizontal and vertical tails realizing stability, the
control surfaces acting for control, and the engines providing
Freighter/value(billion $) Wide body/value (%) Asia pacific (%)
826/224 8837/47.3 41.6
980/280 8070/40.9 42.0
8195/44.4 45.4
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft 1799

Table 2 Metrics of NASA and ACARE.

Metrics Time frame Noise cum LTO NOx below Cruise NOx Rel. Fuel/CO2 Rel. Field length
below Stage 4 CAEP 6 to 2005 best to 2005 best
NASA 200911 N + 1(2015)
32 dB
60%
33%
33%
N + 2(2020)
42 dB
75%
40%
50%
N + 3(2030–2035) 55 LDN (dB) <
75% <
70% Metroplex
NASA 201312 N + 1(2015)
32 dB
60%
55%
33%
N + 2(2020)
42 dB
75%
70%
50%
N + 3(2025)
52 dB
80%
80%
60%
NASA 2017 13
Near-term
(22–32) dB
(70–75)%
(65–70)%
(40–50)%
2015–2025
Mid-term
(32–42) dB
80%
80%
(50–60)%
2025–2035
Far-term
(42–52) dB <
80% <
80%
(60–80)%
Beyond 2035
ACARE*14,15 Vision 2020
50%
80%
50%
Flightpath 2050
65%
90%
75%
*
Refer to year 2000 best in class.

thrust. The swept-wing TAW has been well optimized to the
architecture’s limit. It is built from materials that provide a
superior balance between weight, strength, durability and cost.
It is powered by the turbofan engines which also achieve high
efficiency using the simple Joule cycle.
From 1990s different alternatives were promoted to
improve the aerodynamic efficiency.20,21 The key is to reduce
aerodynamic drag, structural weight and to improve the engine
efficiency. The application of composite materials towards
main structures, like fuselage and wing, and the adoption of
high-bypass ratio turbofans make the TAW outstandingly effi-
cient. A truss-braced wing concept adopts a high aspect ratio
to reduce the lift-induced drag. The ‘C’ wing and ‘Box’ wing
concepts have high spanwise efficiency to reduce the lift-
induced drag. Laminar flow control technologies are used to
reduce the friction drag. Bended-Wing-Body (BWB) concept22
was promoted to reduce form drag by increasing wetted aspect
ratio, to increase spanwise efficiency by using lifting fuselage,
and to reduce the interference drag by smoothly blended the
wing and body. By the studies of the past decades, the BWB
configuration emerges as an unconventional but promising
concept, which has the potential to simultaneously fulfill all
relevant metrics. However, there are still enormous challenges
that need to be resolved.22,23
The aim of the present work is to analyze the development
of several critical technologies of BWB concept from a
historical perspective of technology progress. First, the pro-
jects of BWB development are summarized and analyzed. Sec-
ond, several key-enabling and enhancing technologies are
scrutinized. Third, a non-dimensional parameter, Energy To
Revenue Work ratio (ETRW) indicating aircraft efficiency,24
is adopted to evaluate the efficiency of well-developed BWB
configurations. Finally, the recommendations and conclusions
are drawn.
2. Characteristics of BWB
Different concepts including conventional TAW, Flying Wing
(FW), BWB, Integrated Wing-Body (IWB) and Hybrid Wing
Body (HWB) appear in the literature, which can be categorized
by the relationship between forms and functions, as shown in
Table 3. For TAW the required function is corresponding to
the form almost individually following the Cayley’s design
principles. For flying wing concept all functions are provided
by the wing and are inherently coupled. Some functions are
contrary to others, like high aerodynamic efficiency versus sta-
bility and control. To ease these conflicts and design difficulties
of FW, an individual body using extended chord length was
adopted to provide volume, lift and hosts of the stabilizer/con-
trol surfaces, landing gear and embedded engines, and further
to reduce wetted area. Meanwhile, a smooth transition
between the body and wing is adopted to further reduce the

Table 3 Aircraft concept defined by forms-following-functions.

Concept Lift Capacity Stability Control Thrust PAI
TAW Wing Fuselage Wing Aileron Podded engine UW
H-tail Elevator
V-tail Rudder
HWB Wing/body Body Wing/body Elevons Podded engine UW
V-tail Rudder/SDR AUC
BWB Wing/body Body Wing/body Elevons Podded/buried engine AUC/BLI
Rudder/SDR
FW Wing Wing Wing SDR/TV Buried engine BLI
Notes: H-tail = Horizontal tail; V-tail = Vertical tail; SDR = Split Drag Rudder; TV = Thrust Vector; UW = Under Wing; AUC = Aft
Upper Centerbody; BLI = Boundary Layer Ingestion.
1800 Z. CHEN et al.

interferences and the consequent drag. All these features result stability margins. Therefore, they are very important for flight
in the BWB concept with a multi-functional body without ver- control system design.
tical and horizontal stabilizers. Several system level assessments having gradually improved
Comparing with FW, BWB has a more obvious center- fidelities were performed to know the capability of BWB com-
body, highly aerodynamic efficient outer wing providing part paring with TAW under the same advanced technology sce-
of the lift, and a smoothly blended (integrated) region in nario.12,23–27 It was found that only the BWB configuration
between. The length of the centerbody is normally less than with advanced turbofans can achieve the green-aviation goals
the span width. There is no distinct horizontal and vertical simultaneously. The predicted fuel burn benefit over advanced
stabilizer as on conventional TAW configuration. The longi- TAW designs is much less than early results as Boeing studies
tudinal stability is always relaxed or realized by using down- suggested, which is mostly of single digit gains. However, the
loading of rear center body, outer wing, highly swept angle of noise margin improvement is great because of the noise shield-
the outer wing or their combinations. The directional stability ing provided by the centerbody.
is provided by the winglet or vertical tail, which is usually
insufficient. There are a series of control surfaces along the 2.2. Advantages and challenges
trailing edge of the centerbody to the outer wing, functioning
simultaneously as elevator and aileron for longitudinal and For BWB concept aerodynamic design, structures, SC, noise
lateral controls, therefore, named as elevons. The directional features, Propulsion/Airframe Integration (PAI), and internal
control is mainly provided by rudders on the winglets and is layout are a few areas that differ significantly from the tradi-
assisted by the outboard splitting drag rudders. Due to the tional TAW design. The advantages and disadvantages of
positions of these control surfaces, the moment/lever arms BWB can be summarized as in Table 4. Despite potentially
for pitch and directional control are much shorter than that high aerodynamic and possible structural efficiencies, the
of conventional TAW configuration. Therefore, to satisfy
the requirements on the control authority, the areas of the
elevons are large, which leads to lift loss and high hinge
moments, when further longitudinal trim and stability aug- Table 4 Advantages and disadvantages of BWB
ments are required. configuration.
Although high aerodynamic efficiency and preferable struc- Advantage Disadvantage
tural weight of the wing can be obtained due to a wetted-area
Reduction of the skin friction Weight penalty due to non-
reduction and a preferred spanwise lift distribution, respec-
drag due to wetted area circular pressurized body
tively, this concept still brings design challenges on non- reduction
circular pressurized cabin and Stability and Control (SC) for Trim drag during cruise can be Inferior flying and handling
civil applications. Therefore, the podded engines mounted on avoided by adopting relaxed qualities due to relaxed stability,
the aft-upper centerbody and additional vertical stabilizers stability in pitch limited control authority and
are adopted to eliminate difficulties of engine design and to complex flight control system
satisfy the SC requirements. To alleviate the disadvantages Interference drag reduction by Recovery capability for
of short moment arms, the centerbody is usually lengthened. smooth transition of centerbody potential tumbling for tailless
All these features can be found on TAW that motivate the and wing aircraft
Reduction of lift-induced drag Degraded comfort due to
BWB to be named as HWB. The IWB concept is also of this
due to lifting body and windowless cabin
kind.
improved spanwise lift
distribution
2.1. General characteristics of BWB Wave drag reduction at high Difficulties on satisfying the
transonic speed due to better requirement of evacuation and
The centerbody of BWB is multi-functional. Its non-circular area-ruled shape on airworthiness certification
cross section leads to specific difficulties for pressurized cabin Simplified high-lift devices, wing Sensitive to gust due to low
weight reduction and better wing loading
design. The centerbody provides about 30% lift at cruise when
high-altitude buffet margin can
an elliptical lifting distribution is assumed in spanwise direc-
be realized due to reduced wing
tion. Its integrations with engines and stabilizer/control sur- loading
faces introduce much more difficulties. The smooth Engine integration on the aft- Degraded repairability
integration of the centerbody, a transition region and the outer upper centerbody has the comparing with TAW that
wing determines the attached flow over the BWB, and brings potential to provide greater indicating further infrastructure
distinct aerodynamic efficiency at cruise. Meanwhile due to noise shielding outside cabin investment
the specific geometrical outer mold line of the BWB and the than conventional aircraft
inherent integration, it is not obvious how to define the refer- Local relieving of aerodynamic Limitations on large size BWB
ence area (Sref ) and Mean Aerodynamic Chord (MAC). At the loading by local inertia loading due to taxiway and runway
can reduce bending and shear width limits, gate limits and
earlier development of BWB, Liebeck22 used the area of the
loads on the structure strong wake vortices
trapezoidal wing as reference area, but the definition of
The simplicity of the Potential problems of family
MAC is not clear. During the development, it is normally to configuration suggests a development
use gross planform area and the corresponding MAC as the reduction in part count with a
reference values. Although the specific reference values do corresponding reduction in
not change the lift-to-drag ratio, but they do affect the magni- manufacturing costs28
tude of the force and moment coefficients and the consequent
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft 1801

BWB concept has not yet been embraced by aircraft manufac-
turers. One argument is that BWB have some inherent disad-
vantages/challenges that can partially offset its advantages.29
Large leaps in aircraft efficiency, coupled with reductions in
noise and harmful emissions, are critical to the aviation com-
munity’s resolutions of achieving environmental sustainability.
It cannot be excluded that the arguments in favor of or against
the BWB are often based on the superficial suspicion against
the introduction of new technology. Instead, a satisfactory
decision must be based on a rational investigation of a class
of vehicles with various degrees of integration of configura-
tions using multi-disciplines.
3. Projects on BWB developments
The early development of BWB was reviewed by Liebeck on
the promotion of this concept at McDonnell Douglas com-
pany and its subsequent development under the support of
NASA and Boeing.22 Recently, an evolving trend of BWB
design was reviewed by Okonkwo and Smith with specific
emphasize on multidisciplinary design synthesis and optimiza-
tion.30 A historical perspective on BWB was given by Toren-
beek29 with the conclusions that BWB has the potential to
satisfy the expectations of real eco-friendly airliners. Here the
technologies of developing BWB are reviewed from the per-
spective of different development phases and in different
nations. The developing trends are summarized.
3.1. BWB development in USA
A series of projects were carried out in the USA on the devel-
opment of BWB, as shown in Table 5.22,31-41 The promotion of
BWB was in response to the Bushnell’s query ‘‘Is there
naissance for the long haul transport?” in 1988.22 A ‘Batwing’
concept was conceptualized with the constraints on cylindrical
pressure vessel and engines buried in the wing root. This con-
cept has large aerodynamic advantages over conventional
TAW configuration.
Then a one-year project from 1993 to 1994 was funded by
NASA to McDonnell Douglas company on the topic of Con-
cepts for Advanced Subsonic Transports (CAST), which
resulted in the first generation BWB (BWB-800-I) releasing
the earlier constraints on the pressure vessel and the installa-
tion of engines.23,42 After that path-finding project a three-
year project conducted by NASA in 1994 was given to a
NASA/industry/university team led by McDonnell Douglas/
Boeing company on BWB technology study, which resulted
in the second generation BWB (BWB-800-II). This study
demonstrated the feasibility and performance potential of the
BWB.42,43 In these two projects the design mission of 800 pas-
sengers (PAX) and a 13,000 km range at a Mach number of
0.85 was set by NASA, which was deemed beyond market
forecast data for the further development at that time. Then
the design mission was adapted to a BWB-450 concept as
shown in Table 5. New flattened transonic airfoils and a new
planform of a longer centerbody were obtained by optimiza-
tion using an inverse design code CDISC combined with Rey-
nolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver CFL3D.22,44
After the three-year project, NASA and Boeing did lots of
joint researches on a converged configuration (BWB-450-1L),
including system studies,22 low-speed and transonic wind tun-
nel experiments,45 boundary-layer ingesting inlet with active
flow control,46,47 noise assessment,48–51 structure design of
non-cylindrical fuselage52,53 and flight test.32,40
At the same time period, a collaborative, multi-disciplinary
project named Silent Aircraft Initiative (SAI) was funded by
Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) from 2003 to 2006, aiming
at design an aircraft inaudible outside the airport boundary
within a well populated, urban environment.33 The BWB

Table 5 Projects of USA on BWB development.

Year Project BWB Payload (PAX) Range (km) Ma PAI Experiments
22
1993–1994 CAST BWB-800-I 800 13,000 0.85 4-BLI AUC No.
1994–1997 BWB-tech22 BWB-800-II 800 13,000 0.85 3-BLI AUC High*
1997–2002 Boeing22 BWB-450 478 14,400 0.85 3-podded AUC Low*/high
2002 UEET31 BWB-571 571 13,100 0.855 3-podded AUC No
2002–2012 Flight test32 X-48B 3-podded AUC Low
2003–2006 SAI33 SAX-40 215 9300 0.8 3-core 9-fan BLI No
2004 Quiet green transport34 BWB225-DP-hydrogen 225 6500 0.8 8-podded AUC No
2007 RSCA35 CESTOL170 170 5600 0.8 12-BLI wing spanwise No
2007–2011 SFW36 N2A-EXTE 262 11,100 0.8 2-podded AUC Low
2007–2011 SFW36 N2B 262 11,100 0.8 3-core 9-fan BLI
2008–2010 N + 337 SUGAR-Ray 155 6500 0.7 2-podded AUC No
2008–2010 N + 338 H3.2 354 14,100 0.83 2-core 4-fan BLI No
2010–2011 ERA39 BWB-OREIO 224 12,000 0.80 3-open rotor AUC No
2010–2015 ERA23 ERA-0009A 224 14,800 0.85 2-podded AUC Low
2010–2015 ERA12 HWB216-GTF 216 12,200 0.80 2-podded AUC No
HWB301-GTF 301 13,900 0.84 2-podded AUC No
HWB400-GTF 400 10,700 0.85 3-podded AUC No
2012–2013 Flight test40 X-48C 2-podded AUC
2018 NAH41 BWB BizJet 8 15,200 0.85 2-podded semi-buried No
Ascent 1000 112 5900 0.8 2-podded semi-buried No
BWB-165 165 6500 0.8 2-podded semi-buried No
High* = High-speed wind tunnel test; Low* = Low-speed wind tunnel test.
1802
configuration was selected as a technology collector due to its
potentials on aerodynamic efficiency and noise reduction.
Low-noise technologies of propulsion system, airframe and
their integration were studied. The resulting SAX-40 concept
for an Entry Into Service (EIS) year 2025 realized a predicted
noise level at the airport perimeter of 62 dBA and had the
potential for a fuel efficiency 28% improvement when com-
pared with existing commercial aircraft. Although the priority
was the noise reduction, SAX-40 achieved remarkable fuel effi-
ciency due to the aerodynamic advantages of the BWB config-
uration. The SAX-40 incorporated a novel concept employing
a cambered forward centerbody that increased the forward lift
so that the outer wing airfoils could be more highly aft-loaded
(supercritical type loading) and still be trimmed at cruise with-
out undue drag from pitch trimming with elevons. This, in
turn, allowed a lower sweep with a thicker but lighter outer
wing.
In 2008, Nickol54 performed a risk assessment of SAX-40
concept. The technologies including structures and weight pre-
diction, Boundary-Layer Ingestion (BLI) and inlet design,
variable-area exhaust and thrust vectoring, displaced-
threshold and Continuous Descent Approach (CDA)
operational concepts, cost, human factors and overall noise
performance were considered of high risk. By comparison, it
was found that the SAX-40 would have significantly greater
research, development, test, and engineering and production
costs than a conventional aircraft with similar technology
levels. It was recommended that further design should strive
to achieve an appropriate balance among a variety of metrics,
such as maintenance costs, fuel burn, emissions, and noise. In
2009 Hall et al.55 also assessed the benefits and penalties of
each of the proposed technologies of SAX-40. A method had
been developed to estimate the overall change in fuel consump-
tion and engine noise caused by modifications to an aircraft
design. A low-risk configuration SAX-L/R1 of the silent air-
craft with podded engine was designed by tradeoffs between
noise and fuel consumption for various technologies. The
low-risk configuration can achieve both lower fuel burn and
lower engine noise.
From 2007 to 2011 a large scale project titled ‘‘Acoustic
Prediction Methodology and Test Validation for an Efficient
Low-Noise Hybrid Wing Body Subsonic Transport” was
funded by NASA in the framework of SFW project under
the fundamental aeronautics program.56 The investigation
was a team effort led by Boeing with major contributions from
participants. The primary objective was to design a HWB con-
figuration to meet the initial N + 2 goals in 2009 (see Table 2)
of NASA SFW project with an EIS year 2020.
Based on the previous assessments of SAX-40,54,55 a pre-
liminary cargo version of SAX-40 was developed by MIT,
named SAX-40F, which was identified as N2 for N + 2 noise
goal. Two concepts were derived from the SAX-40 by using
Boeing Integrated Vehicle and Design System (BIVDS) tool
suite: a low risk version designated as the N2A with podded
engines, and the other retaining the SAX-40 type embedded
engines designated as the N2B. The cambered forward center-
body concept was adopted from the SAX-40 concept. Conven-
tional propulsion and flight control characteristics were
assumed to determine configuration design methods for low
noise as opposed to employing and evaluating operational pro-
cedures used in SAX-40 concept.
Z. CHEN et al.
In 2009 under the projected growth of the air transporta-
tion and the consequence of increasing stringent certification
levels for noise and emissions, and further requirement on
vehicle fuel efficiency improvements, NASA initialized the
Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project to iden-
tify advanced integrated vehicle, system and component tech-
nologies. The integration of these technologies will enable
transport aircraft to simultaneously achieve N + 2 vehicle-
level goals of reduction of noise, emissions and fuel burn in
the 2025 timeframe. The enabling technologies needed to be
at a Technical Readiness Level (TRL) of 6 by 2020.11
The ERA project had been organized into two distinct
phases and had three sub-projects on airframe technology,
engine technology and PAI. Both the cargo and passenger air-
craft concepts were required. In phase I, driven by the three
vehicle-level goals of noise, emission and fuel burn reduction,
the investigations on noise assessment of HWB, integration
of open rotors, and low speed flight experiments of X-48B/C
were carried out.23 Three advanced vehicle concepts and an
Ultra-High Bypass-ratio (UHB) engine concept were intro-
duced. Five critical technologies on flow-control concepts,
advanced composite, advanced UHB-engine design, advanced
combustor and PAI concept were identified. In phase II, eight
Integrated Technology Demonstrations (ITD) were imple-
mented. They were active flow control of vertical tail and
advanced wing design for drag reduction, Pultruded Rod
Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure (PRSEUS) of pressurized
cabin design for weight reduction, front block compressor
design for reduction of thrust Specific Fuel Consumption
(TSFC), UHB engine design for TSFC and noise reduction,
fuel-flexible combustor design for LTO NOx reduction, air-
frame component design for noise reduction and UHB engine
integration on HWB for noise and fuel reduction. To reduce
risk on achieving the NASA’s N + 2 noise goal, a one-year
post-ERA project was also rewarded to Boeing to research
on the noise of a preferred system concept (PSC).
Historically, NASA funded most of the projects on BWB
development and accumulated knowledge and technologies
on BWB design. Several different BWB configurations were
developed with increasing fidelity. In 2004, Burg et al.56 and
Hill et al.49 designed a 300-PAX BWB transport powered by
two General Electric (GE) GE-90-like engines using NASA
standard toolset (FLOPS, NPSS and WATE) aiming at
down-select and assessment of candidate Propulsion Airframe
Aeroacoustics (PAA) technologies under NASA’s quiet air-
craft technology project. In 2009, Nickol and McCullers11
designed a 305-PAX HWB configuration (HWB300-2009) for
system study using the same toolset based on the Boeing
BWB-450. In 2010 Collier et al.57 presented two 300-PAX
HWB configurations, a HWB300A with two podded engines
and a HWB300B with two embedded engines to set fuel-
burn goals and to identify the key technology areas of ERA
project. In the same year, Thomas et al.58 promoted eleven
HWB configurations based on HWB300-2009 to assess differ-
ent noise-reduction technologies.
In 2012, Nickol59 studied the scaling effects of HWB with
improved FLOPS, a higher order centerbody weight estima-
tion methodology (HCDStruct)60 and technology assumptions
on hybrid laminar flow control, riblets, variable trailing edge
camber, stitched composites of centerbody, several advanced
subsystems and advanced propulsion system. It was concluded
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft 1803

that given a well-suited set of requirements, the HWB config-
uration has the potential to simultaneously reduce fuel burn
and noise compared to an equivalent technology TAW
configuration.
In 2016, Nickol and Haller12 assessed the performance
potentials of advanced subsonic concepts including the con-
ventional TAW and unconventional configurations. Three cat-
egories of HWB were designed using the technology
advancements of ITDs of ERA and updated weight estimation
method. The airframe technologies of the ERA vehicles for
2025 included a lighter weight structure enabled by damage
arresting composites, natural laminar flow wings (enabled by
a Krueger leading-edge high lift system) and nacelles, and
smaller vertical tails implementing active flow control enhance-
ments. The engine technologies included a low-fan pressure
ratio with short inlet, swept and leaned fan exit stators, a
highly loaded high-pressure compressor enabling higher Over-
all Pressure Ratios (OPR), and a low NOx combustor. By
examining the noise, fuel burn, and emissions results, the
HWB concepts adopting GTF engines provide the best overall
performance.
In 2018, both regional and single-aisle BWB aircrafts were
shown superior to the corresponding TAWs under the NASA
NAH project. And a subsonic BWB X-plane was designed.41
3.2. BWB development in European Union
Soon after the BWB research of the USA were published, the
anticipated benefits of the BWB concept spurred a series of
systematic projects on the investigations of BWB in Europe,
as shown in Table 6. The early BWB concept similar to the
Boeing concept was studied to objectively evaluate the inherent
advantages and challenges of BWB in College of Aeronautics,
Cranfield. The resulting configuration is named BW-98. A sub-
scale flying demonstrator was also developed. However, the
details are not available.61
The BWB concept was studied progressively in detail in the
5th, 6th and 7th EU framework programs. A Multidisciplinary
Optimization of BWB based on BW-98 (MOB)62 and a Very
Efficient Large Aircraft (VELA) project63 were carried out in
the 5th program, with the objective to develop design tools
and methods, and to design and optimize a very efficient large
BWB aircraft concept (resulting VELA-3), respectively. The
VELA BWB resembles the earlier Russia concept IWB-750.
The New Aircraft Concept REsearch (NACRE) project64–66
started in 2005 and was completed in the 6th framework pro-
gram. A Passenger-drive Flying Wing (PFW) configuration
was advanced. An early version NACRE-PFW1 was derived
by modifying the centerbody airfoil and applying outer-wing
twist to the VELA-3 aircraft, and had satisfactory aerodynam-
ics, stability and control characteristics. A later version
NACRE-PFW2 derived from NACRE-PFW1 by changing
the location of the engines, kinematics and position of the
main landing gear. The engines were moved from under to
over-the-wing to minimize forward radiated fan noise. The
kinematics of the main landing gears, which were retracted
sideways, were made to retract longitudinally and positioned
beside instead of behind the cargo bay. The cabin layout was
improved by varying aisle widths, positions, alignments and
shapes regarding emergency evacuation time. The average
evacuation time was improved from initial 89.3 s65 to 84 s
for the new baseline cabin layout.66 Split aileron was also
introduced to enhance the handling quality as well as the sta-
bility and control.66
The Active Flight Control for Flexible Aircraft 2020
(ACFA2020) project67 funded under the 7th framework pro-
gram focused on the development of innovative active control
concepts for advanced configurations from 2008 to 2011. The
design goals were derived from the metrics of ACARE vision
2020, as shown in Table 2, which resulted in ACFA-2020
aircraft.
Besides the projects under the EU framework, there were
investigations on BWB in different nations in Europe. A
business-jet class BWB having 6 PAX was performed at Von
Karman Institute for fluid dynamics (VKI).68 In France sev-
eral projects were performed.69–74 And in Germany, the study
was performed by German Aerospace Center (DLR)75 and
Universities.76 A collaborative framework to solve complex
aeronautics problem was created during AGILE EU project
from 2015 to 2018. In this project, a BWB concept was also
studied as an example of multi-disciplinary design practice.73
3.3. BWB development in Russia
There is a long continuous development effort in Russia.
Several BWB concepts appeared in the open literature, as shown
in Table 7.77-79 As early as in 1989, the Central Aerohydrody-
namic Institute (TsAGI) investigated the ultra-high capacity
aircraft using flying-wing layout.80 In 1997 a Russia project
was supported by International Scientific and Technical Center

Table 6 Projects of European countries on BWB development.

Year Project BWB Payload(PAX) Range (km) Ma PAI Experiment
61
1998–2002 Cranfield BWB-98 960 14,200 0.85 3-podded AUC No
2000–2003 MOB62 BWB-MOB 0.85 3-podded AUC
2002–2005 VELA63 VELA-3 750 14,200 0.85 4-podded UW Low
2005–2010 NACRE64–66 NACRE-PFW2 750 14,200 0.85 3-podded AUC
2008–2011 ACFA202067 ACFA-2020 470 13,300 0.85 2-podded AUC No
2010 VKI68 Roysdon BWB 6 0.735 2-podded AUC
2011—now AVECA project69 AVECA-BWB <600 <16700 0.85 2-podded AUC No
2012—now Airbus Future70,71 Airbus BWB 470 13,300 0.85 2-podded AUC
2015–2019 CICAV72 ONERA-BWB 440 14,800 0.85 2-podded AUC
2015–2018 AGILE73 AGILE-BWB 450 15,700 0.85 3-podded AUC No
1804
Table 7 Projects of Russia on BWB development.
Year Project BWB Payload Range (km)
1997–2001 548–97 of ISTC IWB-75077 750 13,700
2014 FW-20078 211 16,000
2019 BWB-32579 325 12,550
(ISTC) to investigate the technologies critical for implementing
a flying-wing layout aircraft with super-high capacity.77 The
project was undertaken in conjunction with Airbus and Boe-
ing. Four large aircraft configurations were compared in the
conceptual level, which identified three candidate concepts,
an integrated wing body, a lifting body and a pure flying wing,
for analysis. These concepts were compared with a similarly
designed conventional configuration in terms of the aerody-
namics, weight and fuel efficiency. Based on the experimental
investigations of different wing planforms and conceptual level
comparisons, the IWB concept was preferred, as shown in
Table 7. This concept is resembling but different with BWB.
Additionally, the most critical design issue on airworthiness
requirement for emergency egress was identified.
In recent years, there were continuous efforts on the critical
issues of BWB aircraft. Specifically, smaller BWB concepts
were studied. The aerodynamic design, PAI,78 noise shielding
effect81,82 and structure design of pressurized cabin were
performed.79
3.4. BWB development in China
The investigations on BWB configurations were started late in
China,83 but were progressively funded and continuously stud-
ied, as shown in Table 8.84-86 Most of the BWB studies were
performed in the academia. Zhu et al. introduced the
developments of BWB-800-II, BWB-450 concepts87 and SAX
project.88 Zhang et al. investigated the cabin layout,89 stability
and control90 and effects of design parameters.91 Jiang et al.
studied the effects of design parameters on cruise efficiency.92
In 2008 COMAC started the conceptual design of C919.
As an option a concept named NPU-150 was systematically
investigated by Northwestern Polytechnical University in
corporation with COMAC from 2008 to 2010. An aircraft-
level benefit of 15% less fuel consumption was obtained
compared with conventional TAW under the same technology
assumptions. To resolve the constraints on cabin height, the
cargo payloads were arranged between the outboard wing
and the center pressurized cabin. Based on the requirements
of green aviation at timeframe 2020 to 2025, a subsequent
project was funded on BWB investigation to resolve several
challenges under the cruise performance constraints from
2011 to 2014. A new configuration without vertical stabilizer
Table 8 Projects of China on BWB development.
Year Project BWB Payload
2008–2010 C919-B NPU-150 150
2011–2014 SWB84 NPU-300 300
2015–2017 BWB85,86 NPU-330 330
Z. CHEN et al.
Ma PAI Experiment
0.85 4-podded UW Low/high
0.85 2-podded UW/AUC/3-podded AUC Low/high
0.85 2-podded AUC
named NPU-300 featured with an innovative ship-shaped
body was conceived to resolve the requirement of evacuation
and to improve passenger experience by providing windows
on both sides. Meanwhile reconciling the low-speed and
high-speed performances was concentrated on. Low-speed
wind-tunnel experiments were performed to validate the low-
speed aerodynamic design, whereas the high-speed characteris-
tics were studied by using CFD method.84
To further improve the concept for potential applications,
it was decided to increase payload and cruise Mach number
and to keep several experienced design principles on the blend-
ing of wing and body.85,86 The centerbody was enlarged for
longitudinal control authority and twin vertical tails were
adopted for providing directional static stability and control.
The final configuration for experiments was NPU-330. The
low-speed and high-speed tests were conducted in the indus-
trial wind-tunnels, and the low-speed and high-speed designs
were thoroughly scrutinized and validated.
3.5. Categorization and development trends
The BWB concepts can be categorized into three kinds, BWB,
HWB and IWB, as shown in Fig. 1. The first kind is repre-
sented by BWB-450, which has double swept planform and
short aft-body. Several concepts of this kind are still under
investigation in EU countries. The second kind is represented
by N2A-EXTE, which has leading-edge carving over the cen-
terbody to reduce aft-body reflex camber and incorporates
high-efficiency supercritical airfoils on outboard wing. Addi-
tionally, the aft-body is extended to improve noise shielding,
PAI and SC. The third kind is represented by IWB-750, which
has a more conventional body and an extended aft-body. The
wing position is much more forward relative to the body. Most
of the concepts have under-wing mounted engines, which can
also be categorized as HWB. However, Boeing’s ERA-0009A
is a hybrid of BWB-450 and N2A-EXTE, and is very similar
to X-48C with the aft-body extended of X-48B. It is obvious that
NPU-330 has a distinct feature comparing with the main three
kinds, showing a forward wing integrated with a slender body.
Usually the gross area and the corresponding MAC are
used as the reference area and length scale. Both are quite lar-
ger than that of TAW as a function of the maximum take-off
mass (MTO), as shown in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively. Both
Range (km) Ma PAI Experiment
5600 0.78 2-podded AUC No
13,000 0.82 2-podded AUC Low
13,900 0.85 2-podded AUC Low/high
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
Fig. 1 Evolution of BWB concepts.
increase linearly with aircraft size as that of TAW. The wetted
area to reference area ratio (Swet/Sref) of an advanced TAW
(B787-8) is 4.89, which is quite larger than that of BWB. They
are 2.57, 2.32 and 2.14 for IWB-750, BWB-OREIO and
N2A-EXTE, respectively.
Some developing trends can also be observed and are sum-
marized as in the following:
(1) The noise shielding effects of the centerbody are gradu-
ally realized and are enhanced by providing further
shielding of jet noise.
(2) It is obvious that the aft-body is extended to alleviate the
challenges on noise shielding, PAI and SC.
(3) To alleviate PAI and directional stability and control
challenges and to reduce risks, the podded engines and
the vertical stabilizer are incorporated.
(4) The size of BWB concepts in USA and EU decreases
from original large value to recent concepts of 200-
PAX to accommodate to the projected market. How-
ever, the size of concept in China increases from a small
number to around 300-PAX which was established in
design requirement.
(5) There is a lack of depth on investigations of a specified
concept projected for future applications, except BWB-
450 and ERA-0009A.
1805
(6) There are no detailed investigations to resolve several
challenges related to safety including uncontained
engine blade burst, thrust reverser and evacuation.
4. Critical technologies of conceptual design
The fundamental characteristics of BWB as an advanced
technology collector are high aerodynamic efficiency, low
operational empty weight and potential noise shielding when
the engines are mounted on the upper rear centerbody,
which are the consequences of entire integration of lifting
body, wing, control surfaces and engines. Therefore, BWB
has a feature of inherent-multidisciplinary integration and
appears as a Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO)
problem. Trade-offs between different disciplines cannot be
avoided.
The critical challenges are how to reconcile the low-speed
aerodynamics requirement on take-off and landing with high-
speed cruise efficiency, how to balance the adverse require-
ments on stability and cruise efficiency, and how to realize
efficient structures for pressurized cabin and to accurately
predict the structure weight. For the unconventional BWB
aircraft geometry, a solution towards ultra-high efficiency
commercial transport systems requires precise knowledge of
1806 Z. CHEN et al.

Fig. 2 Comparisons of reference area and mean aerodynamic chord length of TAW93,94 and BWB as function of MTO.

all aspects of aerodynamics, propulsion, SC, and component

flow physics, including some nonlinear effects.
Table 9 BWB enabling technologies.
The enabling technologies of BWB are listed in Table 9 cor-
responding to its disadvantages listed in Table 4, which are Technology Key items
based on the Boeing’s study23 and our experiences. They col- BWB aerodynamics High cruise aerodynamic
lectively enable large benefits of BWB, although each item efficiency
may just be of little benefit individually. Some technologies Propulsion airframe
including laminar flow control of wing, PRSEUS structure integration
concept, noise shielding, and advanced UHB engines can High-lift and control
enhance the capability of BWB to achieve specified fuel burn aerodynamics
and noise goals. In the following subsections the enabling tech- BWB structures Flat-sided pressure vessel
BWB stability & control, flight SC requirements for
nologies are scrutinized and the enhancing technologies are
controls, and flying qualities BWB configuration
also analyzed. High-speed control law
assessment
4.1. Aerodynamic design and efficiency Actuation system
requirements
The lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) is well known as the aerodynamic Ride quality requirements
efficiency, which can be determined from the drag polar of an for BWB
BWB propulsion Engine operability
aircraft. For straight and level flight, the maximum L/D can be
Thrust reverser
easily obtained as Armored nacelle
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffisffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi


1=6 BWB actuation system Large secondary power
L 1 pE V1 b2
¼ MAC1=6 ð1Þ requirement
D max 2 0:044Uf m Swet
based on an equivalent friction drag coefficient
1=6
Cfeq ¼ 0:044Uf =Re , CD0 Sref ¼ Cfeq Swet , when the zero-lift
drag equals to the induced drag, where
Uf ¼ ð1 þ rU Sfront =Swet Þ, rU are 4.8 for a straight wing, 4.1 for
a swept wing and 3.5 for a fuselage, Sfront is the frontal area).95
A mean full-configuration Reynolds number is
Re ¼ V1  MAC=v, MAC and kinematic viscosity v. E is the
spanwise efficiency factor and b is the wingspan. Using an
alternative statistical approach for conventional jet aircraft
the maximum ðL=DÞmax can be expressed as95
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi


1=6 2
L 1 Swet b
¼ 220p ð2Þ
D max 2 blref Swet
where lref ¼ 10m.
The maximum L/D of TAW and BWB as the function of
MAC and wetted aspect ratio Awet ¼ b2 =Swet are compared Fig. 3 Lift-to-drag as a function of mean chord length and
in Fig. 3. Both MAC and Awet contribute to the high aerody- wetted area (The data of TAW from literature,93,94 TAW
namic efficiency of BWB. The theoretical formula Eq. (1) predicted by Eq. (2), BWB predicted and trend line by Eq. (1)).
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
Fig. 4 Comparisons of cruise efficiency for TAW and BWB.
can predicted the trend well. Taking the effect of cruise Mach
number into account, the cruise aerodynamic efficiency is then
proportional to multiplication of Mach number (Ma) and L/D
for aircraft with similar engines in a small range of Mach num-
bers. The cruise aerodynamic efficiency parameters MaL/D for
turbofan-powered TAW and BWB aircrafts as a function of
aircraft size are compared in Fig. 4. The efficiency of BWB
is obviously higher than that of TAW cross a large range of
aircraft size. However, only high cruise aerodynamic efficiency
is not enough, because the aircraft must be trimmed, easily
controlled and of balanced low-speed aerodynamic
characteristics.
4.1.1. Trade-off between stability and cruise performance
The aerodynamic design of BWB transport is primarily driven
by cruise performance under constraints on stability and low
speed aerodynamic requirements. High cruise efficiency of
BWB is rooted in the integration of the centerbody, outer
wing, control surfaces and engines to reduce wetted area,
and structurally efficient use of large wing span, resulting in
increased wetted aspect ratio and L/D.
The cruise aerodynamic design should be under stability
and trim constraints. A high-speed aerodynamic optimization
without considerations on stability, pitching up or down
moment, and the lift coefficient at maximum L/D will lead
to practically degraded configuration, because a practical air-
craft should be trimmed at design lift coefficient. Due to the
development of multidisciplinary optimization, an
aerodynamic-design principle gradually forms to realize the
coincidence of zero pitching moment, cruise lifting coefficient
and the maximum lift-to-drag ratio.83 Therefore, it is better
to have positive zero-lifting moment coefficient (Cm0 ) with pos-
itive longitudinal stability margin and negative one vice versa.
When the longitudinal stability margin is more relaxed, a
higher L/D can be achieved. At the earlier development of
BWB, the longitudinal static stability margin was vitally
relaxed to
15% for the first generation Boeing BWB-800-I,
therefore, a fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system was
heavily depended on. For the second generation Boeing
BWB-800-II it was still assumed statically unstable to achieve
high L/D, hence the flight-critical stability augmentation and
flight-envelope protection were required. Boeing BWB-450
was trimmed at the static stability margin of 5%, which was
realized by a Boeing proprietary code WingMOD using the
planform, new transonic airfoil for centerbody and twist distri-
bution.44 The new airfoils were featured with reduced relative
1807
thickness and after-body closure angle, and were designed
through a careful contouring of the upper and lower surfaces.
Technically, there are three different ways to achieve static
stable design. Historically, the flying wings were trimmed by
sweeping the wing and downloading the wingtips using wash-
out, which allows the wingtips to functionally serve as a hori-
zontal tail. However, this method leads to lift loss near the
wing tip and introduces a significant induced-drag penalty.
Due to high swept angle and unideal lift distribution, the effec-
tive aerodynamic wingspan is less than the physical span. Sec-
ond, the centerbody downloading with rear reflex-cambered
airfoils can realize the static stability, which make the rear cen-
terbody function as horizontal tail. This method was adopted
in Boeing BWB-450 design.44 As a large portion of lift is
required on the centerbody for the elliptical lift distribution,
the rear reflex-cambered after-body will lead to higher cruise
angle of attack, which is contrary to the requirement on the
small cruise deck angle. In the project of SAI, the third method
was promoted to design SAX-40 using leading-edge carving of
the centerbody, which makes the neutral point of the center-
body after the center of pressure with leading-edge uploading.
This method can use supercritical airfoil for the outer-board
wing design without trim penalty.96 Although significant
improvements have been made recently thanks to the advance-
ments of aerodynamic reverse design and optimization tools, a
suitable stability margin for a high cruise efficiency design is
still an open question. Since there is no historical data for
BWB and its MAC is about two times to that of traditional
TAW configuration, as shown in Fig. 2(b). Many recently
designed BWB configurations are still having relaxed stability.
In our experience, the recommended stability margin can be
half of the traditional TAW aircraft due to its large MAC
and requirements of the dynamical stability. The lateral static
stability for BWB is not much different with the conventional
configuration, in consideration of that the effect of sweepback
can increase the effective dihedral with angle of attack.97–99
However, it is very difficult to realize directional stability with-
out vertical stabilizer. Additional stabilizer will increase the
wetted area and weight, but it is still adopted in almost recent
designs.22,36,66,67
4.1.2. Trade-off between low and high speed aerodynamic
performances
Since the robust projected growth of civil aircraft in next
twenty years, system capacity improvements are required at
hub airports to resolve the airport congestion and delays,
which has strong implications on the low-speed performance.
Therefore, in the SFW project, the goals on performance of
field length were anticipated to decrease 33% and 50% at time-
frame N + 1 and N + 2, respectively, as shown in Table 2.
However, wing sizing for conventional transonic transports
represents trade-offs between efficient high-speed cruise and
effective high-lift characteristics, which also includes trade-
offs among weight, cost, complexity, reliability and airframe
noise. It is difficult to achieve the field-length performance with
a system level trade balance.100
The trade-offs between low-speed and cruise performances
result in the high-lift system normally combining leading-edge
slotted slats and trailing-edge slotted flaps on conventional
TAW aircrafts. BWB aircrafts have larger wing area and low
wing loading than that of conventional TAW aircrafts, which
1808
implies simplified or eliminated high-lift devices.22 However,
clean BWBs without high-lift devices have exacerbated low-
speed stall characteristics due to its planform shape.22,26 There-
fore, it cannot provide high enough maximum lift coefficient to
enhance take-off and landing performance required by the
regulations.
High lift system have strong implications with safety and
allow compliance with several different certification require-
ments and procedural necessities, such as approach speeds.
Typical approach speeds for the conventional large twin-aisle
aircrafts are 130–160 knots, which is still difficult for BWB
to achieve with traditional high-lift devices.101 High lift sys-
tems are required on BWB configurations despite its low wing
loading, which introduces challenges due to its inherent limited
longitudinal control authority. Traditional single slotted flap is
hard to be used as a high-lift device, because BWB aircraft can-
not trim the resulting high pitching moments.
BWB-800-II and BWB-450 use leading edge slat as high-lift
devices to prevent outboard wing stall, which can satisfy the
constraints on take-off field length and approach speed. How-
ever, the maximum lift coefficients are quite lower than that of
a conventional configuration.22,23 SUGAR-Ray and
ERA-0009A of Boeing and NASA’s HWBs adopt slotted
Krueger flap at the leading edge with a deployable trailing edge.
In the ERA project, an adaptive compliant trailing-edge flap
was also investigated. However, the metrics on field
performance was not mentioned. SAX-40 and N2A-EXTE
adopt deployable drooped leading edge with trailing edge flap
eliminated and are trimmed by thrust vectoring. IWB-750 and
VELA-3 also adopt the same high-lift devices including slotted
slat and simple-hinged flap. The former has take-off filed length
3350 m. The later has the constraint on the take-off filed length
less than 3350 m, but it has an approach speed of 165 knots,
which is quite high.76,77 ACFA-2020 adopts leading edge slat
and a single slotted Fowler flap. It was found that the maximum
lift is not enough and it is difficult to trim the resulting pitching
momentum. Severe lift losses were also observed when the trim
elevons were deflected. When a planform resembling X-48C
with centerbody section extended was used, the approach
performance of ACFA-2020 was improved.101
It can be concluded that the traditional leading edge slat
and slotted flap cannot be easily used for BWB configuration
due to the resulting high pitching moment, unless unconven-
tional trim device is adopted, such as thrust vectoring. When
to trim the resulting pitching moment, a severe lift loss leads
to higher take-off and landing angle of attack due to the short
lever arm. Higher angles of attack were not preferred, because
passenger comfort rapidly deteriorates at or beyond approxi-
mately 8° and further problems during approach can arise
from crosswinds causing the wing tips to touch the ground
before the landing gear.102
Additionally, BWB configuration is also susceptive to gust,
and specifically can be exaggerated at high angle of attack by
low speed. To alleviate thise problem, the planform modifica-
tions are properly required. However, a trade-off with cruise
performance should be balanced. Therefore, low-speed perfor-
mance, stability and control design needs to be integrated with
cruise point design during the first stages of the design process.
To improve the low-speed performance, several design adapta-
tions can be considered
Z. CHEN et al.
(1) Extending the centerbody trailing edge to improve trim
capability by enlarging the lever arm, which can also
improve noise shielding when the engines are integrated.
However, the increased wetted area and the resulting
increased friction drag should be considered.36
(2) A leading edge Krueger flap is more preferred than a
conventional slat, since it can enable a laminar flow wing
by providing protection from insect and debris accre-
tion. A well-integrated slotted Krueger flap has the same
capability for low-speed stall protection. However, its
noise characteristics including Krueger cavity need fur-
ther investigations.103
(3) Simple-hinged flap is much more preferred than a con-
ventional slotted flap due to its favorable pitching
moment. If the slotted flap is required, it is better to
lay it near the Center of Gravity (CG) in the absence
of a conventional horizontal stabilizer.
(4) Unconventional active control methods such as thrust
vectoring,70 flap blowing,99belly-flaps104 or boundary
layer control blowing system at the leading and trailing
edge can be used to improve low-speed high-lift, control
and trim. However, the weight, complexity, reliability,
cost and safety may be challenging in the consideration
of practical implementation.
(5) To realize the full potential of the clean planform of
BWB further investigation need to compromise the
requirements of low-speed and high-speed perfor-
mances. This is mainly because there is no functionally
independent horizontal stabilizer and control surfaces.
4.1.3. Comments on spanwise lift distribution and
multidisciplinary design optimization
Besides the wetted area reduction by the integration of the
wing and multi-functional body, the high-speed aerodynamic
efficiency has to be realized by using well designed spanwise lift
distribution and multidisciplinary design optimization meth-
ods. Several modern transports have a more triangle loading
that increases the induced drag at cruise, but is based on the
reduction of the wing root bending moment and the conse-
quent lighter structural weight, as well as approach and
high-speed buffet aerodynamic characteristics. In the MOB
project, the triangle, elliptic and an average of triangle and
elliptic spanwise lift distributions were studied on a given plan-
form to maximize the cruise efficiency.105 The average type was
preferred for lower wave drag compared with elliptic type and
lower induced drag compared with triangle type. However, this
conclusion could be plausible and misleading. Because the
modern aircrafts have a trend to increase aspect ratio but trad-
ing for increasing operating empty mass.106 BWB configura-
tion has low wing loading and potential local-load balancing.
If triangle or mixed type distribution is used, the required lar-
ger lift over centerbody have to be provided with higher posi-
tive twist, which results in higher deck angle. Therefore, most
of the BWB aircrafts have the elliptic spanwise lift distribution.
Aerodynamic advantages are realized by reduced wetted
area, structurally efficient use of large wing span, relaxed static
stability, and optimum spanwise loading. Therefore, to better
compromise and balance different requirements on cruise effi-
ciency, SC and low-speed performance, MDO method should
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
be used in the concept design stage. Because of the lack of full-
scale test data, validation is a major challenge, and relatively
few system-level studies have been performed. Some funda-
mental questions, like for specified cabin floor area, the opti-
mal width and the lift of the center body, are still open.
Most of the designs are achieved by single-point optimization
at cruise condition with specified planform, but without con-
straints on requirements of the low-speed and SC. However,
based on past designs77,84,85 and low-speed high-lift design
practice,102 the planform has the first order effect on the
low-speed aerodynamic performance. Therefore, when per-
forming MDO, the planform should be parameterized and
can be adjusted to satisfy the constraints. Further details on
review of MDO methods and a design practice to realize the
low- and high-speed performances were presented in detail in
Ref.107 in this volume.
4.2. Stability and control and flying qualities
In early study of BWB, the challenges related to the SC on
high control power,22 low longitudinal and lateral stabilities,
as well as small natural yaw damping78 were raised, which have
aircraft system level impact on aerodynamic efficiency, power
requirement and weight of actuation system. BWB aircrafts
are inherently tailless, which possess some SC characteristics
of FW type tailless aircrafts.97
The SC characteristics of bare BWB are consequences of its
unique aerodynamic configuration, mass distribution, propul-
sion and the layout of the stabilizer and control surfaces,
which are the bases for the development of the full flight con-
trol laws to satisfy the flying quality requirements, and the pre-
liminary actuation system and failure requirements. Based on
the gradually deeper investigation and more experiences, the
perspectives on challenges, control surface layout and design
methods, and the related flying qualities are drawn.
The BWB is an unconventional configuration lacking in
historical database and design knowledge that can enable the
conceptual design phase as TAW configurations. In the
absence of historical data, a physics-based method must bridge
the gaps to generate new knowledge, data, and insights to
enable the design.
One of the new constraints on BWB design is to achieve
trimmed flight and acceptable static stability throughout the
flight envelope. The trim drag of a BWB can be reduced by
allocating its CG further aft compared to an inherently stable
TAW. If the negative static margin is too large, flight-critical
stability augmentation would be required as in the cases of
the first- and second-generation BWB. However, the BWB-
450 layout has been balanced by means of optimization of
the lift distribution along the span and application of washout,
resulting in a configuration trimmed at a stable CG with all
control surfaces in their neutral position.22 This feature results
in a very small trim drag in cruise and low-speed conditions.
The degree of static stability selection depends on the design
philosophy and the use of stability augmentation with active
controls.
4.2.1. Stability and control challenges
Some of the key challenges in controllability of BWB aircraft
are summarized as in the following.
1809
(1) Control surface layout
Control surface architecture is main challenge of BWB
design. The options can be partially tailless with only horizon-
tal or vertical stabilizer, or can be truly tailless without any sta-
bilizers. If both stabilizers are adopted, the additional wetted
surface area would lead to degenerated aerodynamic efficiency.
The BWB configuration typically features redundant elevons
located at the trailing edge of the center body and wing. These
control surfaces are multi-functional, including trim, longitudi-
nal and lateral control, pitch and directional stability augmen-
tation, and wing loading alleviation.
(2) Difficult to choose and realize the static stability margins
Because of much large reference surface area and chord
length, as shown in Fig. 2, the static stability margin of con-
ventional civil aircraft cannot be used as a reference. Mean-
while the longitudinal and directional stability is difficult to
be realized, as they are highly interrelated with aerodynamic
efficiency, due to the inherent wing-body integration. Usually
to have high aerodynamic efficiency, the longitudinal stability
is neutral or unstable. The directional stability is also nearly
neutral stable.
(3) Limited control authority due to short moment arm
Due to the integration of the wing, body and consequent
planform, the moment arms for movables and control surfaces
are short compared to the conventional TAW, which limits the
capability and authority of control surfaces, both in longitudi-
nal and lateral directions.22
(4) Excessive power consumption and actuator mass
penalty
To alleviate the control authority limitations due to short
moment arm, larger control surface can be used to obtain lar-
ger moments. However, the corresponding hinge moment will
increase with the cube of the scale.43 Combined with high
deflection rates to satisfy the requirements of augmentation,
it can result in large secondary power consumption and actu-
ator weight penalty. Therefore, it is highly desirable at the pre-
liminary design level to minimize control surface area, while
ensuring adequate closed-loop handling qualities, with limited
deflections and deflection rates. This challenge has been recog-
nized as an enabling technology for the BWB configuration by
Boeing.23
(5) Complex failure case analysis of actuators and control
surfaces
Failure cases of actuators or control surfaces induce a loss
of authority on pitch, roll and yaw axis. The failure case anal-
ysis then tends to be more complex than that of classical air-
craft configurations, where the functions are segregated and
almost independent for each axis.
(6) Requirement of new control-surface sizing method
Conventionally, control surfaces sizing considers simplified
open-loop handling qualities criteria, such as the pitch rate tar-
1810
get for the elevator and the roll rate target for the ailerons.
However, for BWB it is not obviously to size the individual
control surface, as the functions of control surfaces are not
independent. Therefore, the conventional control-surface siz-
ing methods based on volume coefficient method may be inva-
lid and new sizing methods are required.108
4.2.2. Stability and control architecture
(1) Static stability margin selection
As there is no tail and the control surfaces are part of the
wing, the aspects of stability, trim and control need to be con-
sidered simultaneously to realize a high aerodynamic efficiency
for BWB design.109,110 The static stability and control are
strongly interrelated and conflict with one another. The degree
of stability determines the magnitude of the control action.
The right amount of both stability and control has to be
found. Consequently, the solution is inevitably a
compromise.97
Too much positive static margin entails poor maneuverabil-
ity and trim capability. Particularly, the pitch control may not
be powerful enough to raise the nose wheel off the ground at
take-off. Furthermore, the elevator deflection required to trim
the aircraft in level flight may severely reduce the aerodynamic
efficiency and with a consequent loss in performance. A previ-
ous study shows that the more unstable an aircraft is, the faster
its control surfaces need to move in order to maintain the equi-
librium under disturbance.111 Therefore, a too unstable air-
craft needs an augmentation system that results in a very
high requirement of control power, even possibly problematic
flight safety.112 The static margin for TAW is of a magnitude
0.1–0.2, which appears too large for BWB. Consequently, a
range of ultimate static margin from 0.02 to 0.08 appears to
be reasonable for tailless airplanes, as suggested by Thorpe113
and Donlan.114
Since the development of control theory, an unstable mar-
gin as low as
0.15 for early BWB have been considered.22
However, Bolsunovsky et al.77 argued that due to the problems
relating to the reliability of a fly-by-wire control system and
flight safety, the stability margin should be limited to larger
than
0.03 in the cruise flight, and a value close to zero can
be used in take-off and landing regimes. The highest L/D
was realized at stability margin around
0.14 to
0.12 in that
work. However, the stability margin was finally limited with
the penalty on L/D no more than 0.5.77
Based on the design tool development, the BWB-4501L was
finally designed having stability margin of 0.05, which is corre-
sponding to a minimum static margin for conventional passen-
ger transports at aft CG position. As the MAC of BWB is
around 2.5 times than that of TAW, as shown in Fig. 2, the
magnitude of several percent of stability margin is also quite
large, considering the absolute chord length. When the SC
characteristics of the aircraft is given, the CG range provides
a measure for tracing the capability of the flight control system
to provide control. For conventional passenger transports a
general CG range is of 20%–25% MAC. The allowable CG
range for IWB-750 cannot exceed 6%–6.5% of MAC in take-
off and landing regimes. Even the MAC of BWB is larger than
that of TAW, the corresponding CG range is still lower than
that of TAW.77 As the stability margin for BWB is small,
Z. CHEN et al.
the effect of aeroelasticity on the position of aerodynamic cen-
ter must be seriously considered while defining an allowable
CG range.
The flying and handling qualities are also closely related
to the aircraft stability and control characteristics. When the
inherent stability is high, very high control power is required
to change the aircraft equilibrium. If the inherent stability is
low or neutral, small control inputs or perturbations can
change the aircraft equilibrium easily. If the aircraft is
unstable, any control input or external perturbation will
cause the aircraft diverge when the aircraft is not aug-
mented. However, a statically unstable aircraft is always
unacceptable, especially for civil transports, unless the period
of the associated dynamic mode is very long, or an augmen-
tation system is installed to artificially restore stability.
Therefore, it is important to understand these inherent air-
craft characteristics in order to properly understand its flying
and handling qualities.97
The degrees of lateral and directional static momentum
derivatives are also crucial for SC characteristics of BWB.
Due to the large span and high swept angle of BWB, it is
not difficult to realize a specified static lateral stability
Clb < 0. If the value becomes overly negative, the aircraft will
suffer from Dutch roll mode. A positive value would cause the
plane to spiral while entering a sideslip. However, the direc-
tional stability cannot be deduced in a straightforward manner
for existing requirements, mainly due to the unique configura-
tion, the lack of directional stabilizer or the limitation on its
size. For TAW transports a large directional stability in the
range 0.10–0.25 is recommended. However, it is too large to
be realized on BWB. A minimum value of 0.03 is somewhat
recommended, but this is generally inadequate for ensuring a
well-damped Dutch roll mode. Donlan114 found a quite limited
region of best flight characteristic for FW when

0:057 < Clb < 0 and Cnb > 0:057 in Langley free-flight
tunnel.
Theoretically, the static stability is just the necessary condi-
tion for dynamic stability. Static stabilities in three-axial direc-
tions do not necessarily result in dynamic stability and good
flying qualities. Because the damping derivatives and the mass
distribution are also critical to the dynamic stability. There-
fore, the thorough static and dynamic stability analysis can
only be done for specific well-defined configuration.
It can be concluded that the design of a stable and cruise
efficient BWB is still an open issue, but significant improve-
ments were made recently thanks to the advancement of aero-
dynamic optimization tools considering the effects of stability
and control. Whether the BWB is designed stability or not, an
augmentation system is required due to the static stability lim-
itations imposed by the realization of high aerodynamic effi-
ciency and control authority.
(2) Stabilizer and control surface layout
First, a design decision should be made on whether tradi-
tional horizontal and vertical stabilizers are required or not.
Then the control surfaces layout can be decided on the require-
ments of high-lift, pitch, yaw, roll and drag controls. The lay-
outs of stabilizer and control surface for BWB are shown in
Fig. 1, and a survey on the details are given in Table 10.
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft 1811

No horizontal stabilizer is present due to its additional wet-
ted area and the conflict with the integration of the body and
wing. In the early design, such as BWB-800-II and BWB-450,22
there is no vertical tail on the center body, but on the wingtip
as winglets. However, it is found that the directional stability
and control authority of winglets is not enough, therefore,
additional control provided by split drag rudder is required.
Most of recently studied concepts use the centerbody mounted
inclined twin vertical tails for directional stability and control.
However, the different control-surface layouts do not imply
that the purely tailless or twin-tail layout is more suitable for
BWB concepts. All BWBs have leading edge high-lift devices,
but only several concepts adopt trailing flaps, due mainly to
the limitation of the pitch control authority. A system of trail-
ing edge elevons used for flight control is an obvious common
feature, which is usually justified by their short moment arms
and low individual control authority.
Normally, pitch control is provided by simply hinged ele-
vons at the trailing edge of the centerbody and additional sim-
ilar ones outboard on each side. The center elevons can also be
used for load alleviation. There is also the potential to use sym-
metrical deflection of the inclined vertical stabilizers to aug-
ment pitch control. Yaw control is provided by the rudders
on the two vertical stabilizers. Additional yaw control is real-
ized by the outboard split drag rudders. Three unconventional
yaw devices, split drag rudders, thrust vectoring, and winglets
with rudders, were evaluated for compensating yaw moment
induced by one engine inoperative operations. The most
promising solution is a combination of winglets and non-
permanent thrust vectoring based on the criterion of direct
operating cost.70 Roll control is provided by asymmetrical
deflection of the trailing edge elevons on each outboard wing.
However, the aeroelastic effects of the control surface deflec-
tion should be considered while allocating the elevons.
Since the pressure center of the inclined or vertical stabilizer
lies above the CG, there is coupling between yawing and roll-
ing moments, as for TAW. The coupling between pitching
and/or yawing can also appear when deflecting the outboard
elevens for rolling control.115
It can be concluded that the redundancy, the use of multiple
control surfaces that provide similar control moments, appears
to be a universal design decision made on BWB designs.
Although the redundancy increases complexity, it is still help-
ful to finely control lift distributions and to flexibly avoid
aeroelastic mode coupling or structural load issues. The con-
trol surfaces have multiple combined allocations, the conse-
quent multiple control effects and the couplings among
them. Meanwhile, as the control surfaces are very close to each
other, the nonlinear interactions among them were observed.47
Therefore, the control surface layout and allocation are very
crucial.
4.2.3. Control surface design and control allocation
Control surface design is to satisfy the requirement of control
authority during the initial design process. An implicit assump-
tion is that the subsequent flight control system can be realized
to cope with the aircraft without too much additional control
authority that would limit the ability of the aircraft to perform
critical controls. However, the control system architecture is
closely related to the requirement of control authority.
If an open-loop control is used, the design criterions should
be used for control surface design. If a close-loop control is
adopted, the requirement of augmentation on control author-
ity should be satisfied. Additionally, in the case of close-loop
control, once the control surfaces are operating at actuator-
limited rates, against the surface stops, or actuator failure,
then the design reverts back toward the unaugmented case.
The SC characteristics of the bare configuration will be
restored.
Therefore, in order to develop the necessary control laws,
the characteristics of BWB SC need to be well understood
and actuation system requirements need to be well defined.
To ensure efficient control, the control allocation method
needs to be specified. When the control allocator is designed

Table 10 Selection of stabilizer and control surfaces for some BWBs.

BWB Slats/krueger Flap Center Out Spoilers V-tail/ Winglets SDR Thrust Total
flap elevon elevons rudder vectoring
BWB-800-II22 10 0 2 6 12 0 2 4 26
BWB-45022 10 0 2 8 0 0 2 4 16
H3.238 Yes
SUGAR Ray37 8 0 3 4 2/2 2 11
ERA-22439 10 0 4 8 2/2 2 14
N2A-EXTE36 Dropped LE 0 1 8 2/2 2 11
ERA-0009A23 2 0 3 10 2/2 2 2 19
Boeing OREIO39 8 3 8 2/2 2 17
HWB301-GTF12 2 1 6 2/2 2 11
IWB-75077 8 6 4 8 1/1 6 25
VELA-363 6 4 4 4 12 2/2 2 24
SAX-4033 Dropped LE 2 Yes
NACRE- 12 2 6 2/2 2 12
PFW264,66
ACFA-202067 8 Drop nose 4 4 2 2 12
ACFA- 8 10 7 16 2 6 41
2020Final67
AVECA-BWB69 10 1 8 2 11
Airbus BWB70,71 2 6 2/2 2 12
1812 Z. CHEN et al.

in the flight control laws, it must provide at least the control

Table 11 A list of criteria for control authority.23
authority in each axis that has been assumed when the SC con-
trol authority analysis was performed. Direction Trim/control Requirement
To ensure safety the failure scenario analysis must be thor- condition
oughly performed. Failure scenario analyses for elevon layout Longitudinal Forward CG Takeoff nose wheel liftoff at 3.0
and sizing were addressed by Garmendia et al.116 and in the (°)/s2 pitch acceleration
ACFA2020 studies.117 The large control surfaces of original Trim at landing reference speed
ACFA-2020 were splitted into smaller ones to eliminate the (VREF) and maneuver to stall
failure critical elevons. (VS = VREF/1.23)
Trim at VREF and go-around at
6.0 (°)/s2 pitch acceleration
(1) Critical criteria Landing nose wheel hold-off
down to stall speed
To satisfy the control-authority requirements of critical After CG Takeoff nose wheel steering with
trims, maneuvers and augmentations, critical criteria are >4.0% weight on nose gear
applied to evaluate the control authority. The moments Stall recovery at
4.0 (°)/s2 pitch
required by trim, maneuver, and Stability Augmentation Sys- acceleration
tem (SAS) specify the requirements of the control system, Lateral- Engine-out Balance engine-out on ground
which must be less than or at least equal to the control author- directional minimum with no sideslip and no nose
ity available at each critical off-design point. These require- control speed wheel steering
ments are the constraints that drive the planform of control Balance engine-out in air with
surface design. no sideslip and less than 5° bank
Control-authority requirements of an infinite number flight angle
conditions need to be evaluated, however, not all of them are Crosswind Trim in 35 knot crosswind with
critical. For unconventional aircraft like BWB, it is uncertain landing trim no crab angle at slowest
approach speed (lightest weight)
which flight conditions are most likely to violate the control
Crosswind A 6° heading (sideslip) change in
authority constraints. The more flight conditions evaluated landing 2 s at maximum wing fuel
are the better, whereas the data and time are quite limited dur- maneuver landing weight
ing the conceptual design stage. A limited number of evalua- Landing roll A 30° bank angle change in 2.5 s
tions poses a risk of missing certain control authority maneuver at maximum wing fuel landing
constraints, which could lead to severe consequences including weight
degraded performance, accidents, expensive redesign and
delays, or even program cancellation.
Control authority analysis can be broken down into the
longitudinal and lateral-directional conditions. Based on the (2) Control surface sizing methods
experiences in the flight experiments of X-48B/C, Boeing sum-
marized a series of crucial criteria for longitudinal, lateral- Control surface sizing is a key challenge for BWB design,
directional control authorities for BWB, as shown in mainly due to unconventional flight dynamics connected with
Table 11.23 The simulations of full scale BWB aircrafts and multiple redundant control surfaces. The control surface sizing
actual flight testing of the X-48B have shown that this set of not only need to satisfy the control authority requirements but
critical maneuvers defines a CG envelope in which a BWB also need to provide level 1 safe handling qualities for civil
can safely operate. When all maneuvers are evaluated, the aircraft.112
most restrictive set is used to define the allowable flight CG The adequacy of these control surfaces is determined in
range. The airplane must be loaded within this CG envelope part by their size, but also by the planform shape. For conven-
or it will not be able to perform all required maneuvers. For tional TAW, the sizing of stabilizer and control surfaces are
AVECA-BWB it was found that the most critical issue is the almost independent after the wing design due to the conve-
rotation at take-off, while the clean configuration has to pro- nience to shifting wing or tail position individually. In a quite
vide a minimum nose-up pitching moment to enable the recent study a conventional volume coefficient method was
rotation.110 used to size twin vertical and inclined stabilizers for BWB.
The engine out and crosswind landing trim requirements Both have dimensions resembling A380. The CFD results
are only marginal by themselves for determining whether a showed that stability derivatives are similar for both twin-
BWB can operate safely. These requirements do not provide stabilizer configurations. The inclined configuration provided
enough control authority to simultaneously stabilize the yaw a smoother response, but its drag is higher. It was concluded
axis and provide enough control for these maneuvers. Study that a twin-stabilizer design is suitable for BWB aircraft.115
has shown that the yaw axis requires the most augmentation Generally, two complementary approaches for BWB stabil-
to provide desired stability for the BWB.23 It is well known ity and control design were studied. The first method is in the
that the B-2 was designed for engine out capability down to framework of MDO integrating a stability and control
the stall speed. This should be considered as a target for design module, or considering stability constraints during the plan-
of the yaw control surfaces for BWB. form optimization.109,118 The second method treats BWB as
During these criteria checking a system way for selection a control-configured vehicle. This approach takes advantages
the type and initial control-surface layout is required. If the of optimization tools to simultaneously optimize a controller
control authority is not enough, the planform modification and some physically meaningful parameters. In the quite
may be the best option for relieving those problems. recent work of Denieul et al.108 the integrated design of
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
control-surface sizes and flight-control laws for an unstable
BWB were constructed to optimize multicontrol surfaces
under handling quality constraints. Significant gains in terms
of the outer elevon’s span that satisfies the closed-loop han-
dling quality constraint were demonstrated.
In the work of Garmendia et al.116 the tradeoffs between
drag, control authority, actuator weight, and actuation power
requirements as a function of the number and spacing of ele-
vons were studied. The actuators were sized based on hinge
moments computed during nominal and failed control flight
conditions. N2A-EXTE was used to demonstrate these trade-
offs. The study concluded that adjacent elevons could be com-
bined to achieve reductions in weight, power usage, and fuel
burn. This resulted in a reduced number of elevons from the
baseline and unequal span fractions. In the design of ERA-
0009A, explicit vertical tail sizing was not performed. Instead,
the vertical tails were sized to provide the same volume coeffi-
cient as the X-48C of a value 0.01279. For X-48C the explicit
vertical tail sizing was performed to provide more crosswind
and engine-out control margins than that of the X-48B corre-
sponding to the pilot comments.23 BWB-OREIO also has the
similar vertical tail volume coefficient.39
After the stabilizer and control surfaces sizing, a series of
CFD and/or wind-tunnel tests need to be conducted to develop
an aerodynamic database. The aerodynamic database is
needed to develop the aerodynamic model and associated sim-
ulation, from which the bare airframe SC characteristics can be
understood and assessed.
(3) Flight control system design and control allocation
strategies
Based on the bare airframe stability and control character-
istics, a full authority augmented flight control system needs to
be designed to meet the flying qualities requirements, and pre-
liminary actuation system and failure requirements. Most of
the studied BWBs are of relaxed stability or are barely unsta-
ble. Hitting deflection stops or rate limits on an unstable air-
craft is potentially catastrophic. In this situation the aircraft
will revert back to its open-loop, i.e. unstable, behavior.22,71,119
Therefore, SAS is compulsory for handling qualities and
safety. The essential element of the SAS is the control law,
which is often implemented in a FBW system. For aircraft with
significant stability augmentation, the flight control system
introduces additional dynamics resulting in a higher order
characteristic equation. Interpretation of high order character-
istic equations can be challenging.
In the control law design, a proper control allocation is very
crucial, for it will determine pitch, roll and yaw capability of
the aircraft. It is also difficult because of the intrinsic redun-
dancy feature of BWB control. When the control allocation
optimization is performed, the control authority, hinge
moments, actuation power demands, and actuator forces and
moments should be taken into consideration.
Cameron and Princen120 comprehensively studied control
allocation requirements for BWB. Goldthorpe et al.121
describes control allocation on the X-48B, featuring some kind
of ganging method with tabulated tables to avoid any online
computations. This method is purely deterministic. But it has
drawbacks on a lack of flexibility and implications of high
deflections and deflection rates. Waters122 implemented differ-
ent control allocation strategies on a BWB. He concluded that
1813
direct control allocation provides the smallest errors for it
yields smaller deflections, therefore control surfaces act more
in their linear efficiency domain. Most recently, an artificial
neural network and genetic algorithm were used for the con-
trol allocation optimization problem of a BWB to minimize
the sum of absolute values of hinge moments.123
4.2.4. Flying and handling qualities
The Flying and Handling Qualities (FHQ) of BWB inherently
depend on its stability and control characteristics and the flight
control system. When the flight control system has been
designed, a series of piloted simulation tests can be used to ver-
ify whether handling qualities requirements can be satisfied
under certain specified criteria. This can significantly reduce
the risk of unexpected flight controls problems before design
decision-making.
The tailoring of FHQ requires clear and adequate criteria.
FHQ terms present in the military standard, like MIL-STD-
1797. The civil requirements, like FAR-25, are qualitative in
nature, and do not even refer to the FHQ field explicitly at
all. Therefore, the trend in the civil transport aircraft industry
has been for manufacturers to design aircraft with a wide range
of different flying qualities due mainly to the fairly loose con-
straints. However, a failure to provide good flying qualities
may lead to unsafe operations, especially in bad weather and
emergency procedures.
Handling qualities constraints are expressed both in terms
of maximum authority to trim the aircraft and maneuvering
in the whole flight envelope, as well as constraints on open-
and closed-loop poles characteristics. The longitudinal Band-
width/Phase delay/Gibson drop back criteria, as suggested
by the military standards, together with the Generic Control
Anticipation Parameter (GCAP) were proved possible to be
used to assess FHQs of BWB aircraft. For the lateral-
directional motion, the MIL-F-8785C criteria were used.
Although it is possible to assess the FHQ of BWB configura-
tions using these criteria, more research is recommended
specifically on the lateral-directional FHQs criteria and
requirements of highly augmented large transport aircraft.97
A generic handling quality tool to assess control authority
in conceptual design for unconventional aircraft, like flying
wings and non-symmetric airplanes, was developed by Chu-
doba.124 This approach was further developed by Coleman
and Chudoba.125 De Castro conducted piloted-handling trials
of a FBW BWB civil aircraft in a fixed-base simulator.97 The
prescribed solution was a slightly unstable aircraft. Both longi-
tudinal and lateral handling qualities were studied. The longi-
tudinal handling qualities were predicted by using the
bandwidth/phase-delay criterion, drop-back criterion, and
the GCAP criterion. The lateral handling qualities were deter-
mined by adopting several criteria from the military specifica-
tion MIL-F-8785C. The piloted handling trials reveal that the
selected BWB configuration has essentially Level 1 or Level 2
FHQs, depending on the task. The main contributions for the
Level 2 deterioration were identified as residual lateral-
directional activity, unconventional flare, ground to flight
model discontinuity, flight path PIO, and insufficient flight
path control when one engine has failed. Peterson and
Grant126 used much of the data from de Castro’s work97 to
determine the handling qualities of the BWB, using
piloted-handling trials and different criterion on a moving-base
1814
simulator. Three pilots rated the same longitudinal and lateral
handling qualities as that of de Castro. It was concluded that
the simulator motion did not have a significant effect on the
ratings. These studies only evaluated some low-speed maneu-
vers at takeoff and landing phases. Further studies on high-
speed handling qualities such as cruise and initial descent are
expected.
4.3. Cabin structure concepts and weight prediction
For BWB, apart from the high aerodynamic efficiency realized
by the outer mold line of BWB, an efficient structural design of
lighter weight than TAW is also a critical technology for
advantages of BWB. The BWB concept was promoted while
releasing constraint on using cylindrical pressure vessel,22,42
and exhibits distinct aerodynamic shape. The outer mold line
defined by the aerodynamic configuration is a compulsory con-
straint for BWB structure design, because the high aerody-
namic efficiency is the primary advantage and is of first
order effects. Although the spanwise distribution of lift is
favorable to balance local inertia loading and results in weight
saving of wing structures, the weight penalty of the non-
circular pressurized cabin is still challenging. The weight
penalty of the body is 21% and 28.7% for early concept
BWB-45022 and a recent concept ERA-0009A,23 respectively.
The pressurization load on the compound curvature non-
circular body is resisted by very high out-plane bending stres-
ses, but not by most efficient hoop tension as circular body of
TAW.53 More severely the longitudinal body bending and
spanwise wing bending result in comparable bi-axial loads
on the body shell.23 The cabin pressure load is experienced
on every flight, and thus fatigue becomes the design criterion.
Since the large secondary-bending effects of the cabin pressure
loads, the using of metallic materials is precluded, while com-
posites are essentially exempt from fatigue and hence would
suffer no penalty.28,127 However, the high bi-axial loads make
the adoption of conventional prepreg composite materials that
are susceptible to resin-dominated interlaminar failures unfea-
sible. Additionally, the compound curvature shape exacerbates
manufacturing costs, particularly if conventional multi-piece
aircraft construction techniques are adopted. The bi-axial
loads make the construction of continuous loading paths much
more difficult. Therefore, the structure design of BWB mainly
concentrated on the structural concept of non-circular pressure
cabin.
Based on the complex loads on the body resisted by differ-
ent structure forms, different concepts were introduced with
respect to the BWB centerbody. Weight and cost are the pri-
mary figures of merit. Four concepts including the integrated
skin and shell,22 segregated skin and shell,22,52,53,127–129
hard/soft shell130 and oval concepts131,132 were studied. From
the aspects of concept simplicity, safety, passenger experience,
structural efficiency, the capability to keep OML, manufactur-
ing, space waste, structure forms and load balancing, all the
presented concepts have their pros and cons. From the studies,
it can be found that the segregated inner and outer shell is dif-
ficult to manufacture and has high weight penalty133; the
hard/soft shell concept has large dead weight penalty130; the
oval concept is inferior to satisfy the requirement on
OML.131,132 Therefore, the integrated skin and shell concept
is a compromised choice as previously made by Liebeck22
Z. CHEN et al.
and Mukhopadhyay.53 However, the integrated concept still
has large weight penalty.53,133 Until now the optimal structural
layout of BWB is not yet fully understood. A topology opti-
mization method was used to determine the structure layout
of BWB passenger aircraft, which is valuable to acquire more
knowledge for optimal structural layout.134
Ultimately, weight is the primary measure of structural per-
formance. The Boeing and NASA focused on developing the
highly integrated PRSEUS concept under NASA SFW135,136
and ERA project.137,138 The finite element analysis and trade
studies of centerbody section using PRSEUS demonstrated
that BWB aircraft can be structurally as efficient as the con-
ventional cylindrical skin-stringer-frame construction.139,140
Although PRSEUS structure concept offers potential benefits,
the issues of manufacturing and repair, high maximum stress
and strain levels, and adverse aerodynamics effect due to the
deformation should be addressed.141
Recently a concept of structure layout based on the pro-
composite hybrid double lattice-rods panels was used for
BWB centerbody. A weight saving of 22%–25% was estimated
from the preliminary design.142 The feasibility of the manufac-
turing methods using currently available processes of aircraft
production was further analyzed. It was found that the manu-
facturing scheme decreases the labor input necessary for man-
ufacturing and assembling the flat double-lattice panel of the
pressurized cabin.79
Weight engineering is a principal discipline involved in air-
craft design. An accurate weight prediction in the conceptual
design stage is very crucial to determine the aircraft perfor-
mance. Weight depends on key factors including aircraft size
and geometry, internal structural arrangement, the limit load
factor, and the choice of material. It can be obtained statisti-
cally by empirical method, analytically by semi-empirical
method, computationally by Finite Element Method (FEM)
or jointly by combination of these methods. For new aircraft
configurations the empirical and semi-empirical method are
quite limited due to lack of the historical data and primary
structure concept. The accuracy of FEM depends on the type
of structure and the details of the model. Usually common cal-
ibration factors of 1.25–2.0 are used to correlate the theoretical
FEM weight to the actual weight.
As an unconventional concept, BWB aircraft lacks histori-
cal data that is typically used for sizing and weight estimation
in the conceptual design phase. Furthermore, the centerbody
section is of particular concern due to its unique loading char-
acteristics and adoptions of new structure concepts, which
makes sizing and weight estimation even more difficult and
of high uncertainty.143,144 Inaccuracy and uncertainty of
weight evaluations could dissatisfy mission requirements and
degrade the overall viability of BWB concepts. Therefore,
weight prediction has been identified as a high-risk item.54
The developed weight prediction methods for BWB are
summarized in Table 12. The earlier methods are all semi-
empirical, which are quite limited. The recent methods are
exclusively FEM based methods but have high computational
cost. A coarse-FEM based method was promoted very recently
to reduce the cost. All the methods are for specific structural
concept and materials. Therefore, when one specific method
is adopted, the corresponding limitations should be consid-
ered. The predicted structural weight/mass ratio (Mst/MTO)
is from 18% to 26%, which is reasonable compared to that
of TAW.
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft 1815

Table 12 Weight prediction methods for BWB.

Year Name Type Structural concept Material BWB Mst/MTO
(%)
1998145 WingMOD Semi-empirical Integrated Sandwich with BWB-800
composite face sheets
2001146 Extended conventional Segregated CFRP BW-98 24.1
Empirical cylinder Light alloy 18.1
2004147 FLOPS weight FEM-based semi-empirical Integrated CFRP BWB-450 21.4
mode
2006129 PrADO FEM Integrated Sandwich panels with VELA-3 like 23.6
stringers and frames
2008148 HyperSizer FEM PRSEUS Laminates using OREIO 24.9
Hercules AS4 and N2A 27.0
IM7 fibers
201260 HCDstruct FEM-based PRSEUS Effective laminates OREIO 24.6–25.8
ERA- 25.9
0009H1
2013144 M&S Physics and FEM-based PRSEUS Effective laminates N2A 22.2
2015143 VaC-CADO Coarse-FEA based on PRSEUS Effective laminates OREIO 24.9
HCDstruct
Note: CFRP = Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Plastic.

Fig. 5 Comparisons of OEM/MTO for BWB and TAW.
The comparisons of the ratio of Operational Empty Mass
(OEM) to maximum take-off total mass (MTO) between
BWB and TAW are shown in Fig. 5. For TAW the ratio exhi-
bits a decreasing trend with increasing aircraft size. The ratio
of BWB is of large scatter and is generally larger than that
of TAW, except several middle size concepts. This scatter
and general trend may be due to the uncertainty of the predic-
tion method and the weight penalty of the centerbody,
respectively.
4.4. Noise reduction
In the early development stage of BWB, the high aerodynamic
efficiency was thoroughly pursued, therefore its noise reduc-
tion potential was not fully appreciated and understood,
specifically its PAA effects. For BWB-800-II and BWB-450
the engine exhaust was aft of the trailing edge,22 which makes
the shielding of the aft radiated engine noise impossible. Air-
craft noise can be categorized into the airframe noise, the
engine noise and the PAA interactions. Considering noise cer-
tification required by the regulations, the flight operations are
also very critical. BWB has specific noise features due to its
unconventional configuration and performance.
The airframe noise mainly includes the noise sources of the
high-lift system and the landing gears. Because the elimination
of trailing edge slotted flap, BWB has no this noise source.
Normally in order to realize laminar flow wing and to improve
low-speed performance, a slotted Krueger flap is adopted as
the leading edge high-lift device to delay outer board wing sep-
aration and to enlarge stall angle. If a drooped leading edge is
adopted, further noise reduction can be realized. However, the
noise features of the Krueger flap and drooped leading edge
are not well understood. The noise could be lower than tradi-
tional slat due to its shallow cove for the Krueger flap. But it
has additional resident cavity and larger brackets than the slat
tracks. These features can bring additional noise sources.
The main landing gears are mounted at the transition
region between the centerbody and the outer board wing on
BWB, where local flow speed can be as large as or higher than
freestream flow velocity at approach condition. For the con-
ventional TAW configuration, the local flow speed is almost
20% lower than the freestream velocity. This local flow veloc-
ity is very important because it controls the noise level, follow-
ing a sixth power law.149 Since the engines are mounted on the
rear upper centerbody, the landing gears can be shortened and
partially podded, which are quite new realizable potentials and
need further investigations.150
To know the airframe noise characteristics of the BWB,
extensive wind tunnel experiments were performed on leading
edge slat,151 Krueger flap,152,153 comparisons between them,103
and drooped leading edge with landing gears.154 The computa-
tional aeroacoustic (CAA) methods were also used to predict
the Krueger flap noise.155,156 Most of the experiments were
done by Boeing and NASA. The noise prediction methods
for Krueger flap,157 and the landing gears149 were updated
based on the experimental and computational data.
In the timeframe of next generation civil aircrafts, the UHB
geared turbofan could be adopted for its low TSFC and noise
1816
feature. However, it is difficult to get proprietary data on noise
features of future UHB engines. Engine noise sources have
changed from the dominated compressor and jet noise of tur-
bojet engines to the mixture of fan and jet noise according to
the introduction of high bypass turbofan engines and the incre-
ment of BPR, as shown in Fig. 6.158 UHB engines have the
noise features of mixing fan and jet noise. Fan noise is very
tonal and has a well-defined directivity around the engine.
Jet noise is a distributed source from the plume that extends
five to seven fan-nozzle diameters downstream the engine. As
the fan diameter is very large, to relieve the mounting loss of
UHB engines, a short nacelle is preferred. However, it is hard
to lay acoustic liner in a shortened nacelle.
PAA effects of a BWB with UHB engines mounted on aft
upper rear centerbody are of distinct features comparing with
that of the conventional TAW configurations with under wing
mounted engines. On the one hand, the engine position of
BWB is favorable for adoption of UHB engine. On the other
hand, the centerbody can provide very effective shielding of
upstream propagated noise. However, due to the characteris-
tics of the jet noise, it is hard to be shielded. The PAA effects
mainly depends on the distance of the engine exhauster to the
trailing edge of configuration and the characteristics of noise
source, like spectra and directivity. Since it is very expensive
to model the PAA effects using high fidelity CAA methods
and there is no historical database. Therefore, many wind tun-
nel experiments were performed to obtain the PAA character-
istics of BWB using simplified point noise source in nacelle,159
jet noise shielding and jet noise source position mitigation,160
two dual-stream, heated Compact Jet Engine Simulator
(CJES),161 Broadband Engine Noise Simulators (BENS),162
an Ultrasonic Configurable Fan Artificial Noise Source
(UCFANS)163 and open rotor noise.164 It was found that the
upstream propagating fan noise can be effectively shielded,
and that the pylons and their orientation, and the chevrons
have favored effects on jet noise reduction and shielding.160
Flight operational conditions play an important role on air-
craft system noise assessment, because the flight parameters,
such as the flight Mach number and the angle of attack, deter-
mine the noise source levels. Meanwhile, the flight path deter-
mines the distance of the noise propagation, and consequently,
the amplitude of the noise received at the measurement loca-
tions. The flight operations of BWB are quite different with
that of the conventional aircraft. The angle of attack at takeoff
and landing states, normally 10–13°, are much higher than that
of conventional TAW aircraft, normally 4–8°. The higher
angle of attack has adverse effects on noise reduction. The
approach speed is normally lower than that of TAW configu-
ration due to the BWB’s low-wing loading.
Fig. 6 Evolution of engine noise sources with BPR increasing.158
Z. CHEN et al.
Based on the accumulative configuration improvements
and database on airframe noise and PAA effects, NASA noise
assessment of BWB began formulation in 2003 and was first
published in 2009,165 then updated in 2010,58 2012,166 and
2016167 on NASA HWB. Most recently the uncertainty of
BWB aircraft system noise prediction was studied using the
direct Monte Carlo method.168 NASA also performed system
noise assessment of N2A-EXTE based on abundant experi-
mental data of airframe noise and PAA effects. Boeing began
its BWB system noise assessment in 2011 and first published
the results of BWB with podded engines in 2014,23,169 and
on BWB with open rotor engines in 2015.170 These assessments
were implemented in the SFW and ERA projects.
The cumulative noise levels of BWB are compared with that
of conventional aircrafts in cumulative Effective Perceived
Noise Level (EPNL) dB, as shown in Fig. 7. It is obvious that
the noise level of BWB is quite lower than that of conventional
aircrafts, except the BWB with open rotors. However, they still
cannot reach the NASA goals, which indicates that the noise
shielding is not enough, but further reduction on airframe
noise is required. A typical tone corrected perceived noise level
was presented by Guo et al.169 It was shown that the noise
sources of the main landing gear and Krueger flap are domi-
nant at approach. Whereas at cutback the dominant compo-
nent is slat noise, and at sideline the sources of aft
propagation fan noise, landing gear and Krueger are the com-
parably dominant components. Clearly, the engine compo-
nents are not dominant at any of the three operation
conditions, even though they still make noticeable contribu-
tions at cutback and sideline conditions where the aft fan noise
is comparable to the slat noise.23,169
Fig. 7 Comparisons of noise margins of BWB with conventional
TAW aircrafts (ICAO certification data).
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
The potential contributions of different technologies on
the noise reduction23 was studied. A future conventional
TAW aircraft with geared turbofan engines at timeframe
2025 has an 18 dB reduction relative to the 1998 aircraft
for nearly cumulative 29 EPNL dB below Stage 4. This
improvement is attributed primarily to the geared turbofan
engine. The Boeing BWB aircraft ERA-0009A achieves addi-
tional 5 dB reduction by acoustic shielding to cumulative 34
EPNL dB below Stage 4. Further technologies are required
on landing gear and leading-edge device to reduce noise level
to the N + 2 goal.
A post-ERA Advanced Air Transport Technology (AATT)
project was followed to study the technologies to further
reduce noise. In this project the ground noise footprint area
of NASA’s HWB301-GTF was predicted, which is 82.5% less
than that of a B777-like TAW aircraft, with upper and lower
level of uncertainty 70% and 85.9%.171 A new set of noise
reduction technologies was also selected and evaluated on
HWB301-GTF for the 2035 timeframe of the NASA far-
term goal, as shown in Table 2. When eighteen configurations
with different noise reduction technologies were added to form
the final aircraft concept (HWB-FT-2017), a margin of 50.9
EPNL dB below Stage 4 was achieved, as shown in Fig. 7.
The most noticeable contributions were internal nacelle liner,
Krueger flap bracket alignment, Krueger flap cove filler and
partially podded main gear.172 A noise reduction technology
roadmap for a Mid-Fuselage Nacelle (MFN) aircraft concept
was also established to achieve NASA’s noise goal of the far
term timeframe.173
It can be concluded that noise reduction is an obligation for
future civil aviation reflected on the more stringent noise reg-
ulation. BWB has inherent features with aft upper centerbody
mounted engines, low wing loading and simple-hinged trailing
edge flap, which can help noise reduction. The following ben-
efits can be expected
(1) Engine noise can be shielded by the airframe.
(2) The landing gear can potentially be shortened.
(3) Low-wing loading results in low approach speed.
(4) The trailing edge flap noise source can be eliminated.
(5) If Krueger flap is used, it has shallow cove and weak
separation, which can reduce noise.
However, BWB has also some flight operation related dis-
advantages for noise reduction
(1) Much higher angles of attack at take-off and landing,
usually 10–13°, than that of TAW aircraft, normally
4–8°. Higher angle of attack can lead to higher
slat/Krueger noise than conventional slat at low angle
of attack.
(2) The main landing gears are mounted at the transition
region from the outer board wing to the centerbody,
where local flow speed at approach condition is higher
than that of TAW aircraft. This difference makes the
main landing gear noise source higher.
(3) If the Krueger flap is used, its brackets are larger than
the tracks of slats, and the road can lead to local flow
separation when they are not along local flow direction.
These additional features of the Krueger can introduce
higher noise level.
1817
(4) To relieve the mounting loss of UHB engines, short
nacelle is preferred. It is hard to lay acoustic liner in
the shortened nacelle.
(5) Due to the adoption of UHB engines and the favored
engine noise shielding by centerbody, the airframe noise
sources emerge as dominant components, which results
in distinct noise features for BWB aircrafts.
4.5. Engine technologies
Fuel efficiency is always a driven design matrix for commercial
aircrafts because it is an important determinant of aircraft
range, size, economics, and emissions. Historically, the fuel
burn per seat kilometer of gas-turbine powered commercial
aircrafts has been reduced by 70% since the commercial service
started in the 1950s.7 It exhibits an average rate of about 2%
per year since 1970. The improvements of the airframe tech-
nologies contribute about half of the gain, whereas the
advancements of the engines contribute the rest. Therefore,
engine is one of the dominant design factors and its technolo-
gies were recently analyzed in detail concerning green
aviation.174
The contribution of engines to the aircraft efficiency
through engine overall efficiency go , engines’ weight included
in OEM and installation drag penalty. However, the turbofan
engine is a common technology for different aircraft concepts.
It needs to improve engine efficiency and to reduce noise and
NOx emission simultaneously for sustainable aviation. These
aspects are analyzed in a historical perspective of advancement
and recent BWB studies.
The overall engine efficiency go ¼ gth gpr gtr is primarily a
function of the thermodynamic efficiency gth and the propul-
sive efficiency gpr , gtr is generally fixed and close to 1. The large
turbofan engines for the most efficient commercial aircraft in
service, as shown in Fig. 8, have thermodynamic efficiencies
up to 55% and propulsive efficiencies lying between 70%
and 80%. The resulting overall efficiency is around 40%.
The thermodynamic efficiency can be improved by increas-
ing OPR to a possible higher value around 65–70%, combin-
ing with the development of new materials, architectures,
and component technologies. The historical OPR has an
increasing trend174 for engines of GE, Pratt and Whitney
Fig. 8 Commercial aircraft gas turbine engine efficiency trend,
bypass ratio.174
1818 Z. CHEN et al.

(PW) and Rolls-Royce (RR), as shown in Fig. 9(a). In the
BWB aircraft design, both Direct-Drive (DD) and GTF engi-
nes were studied in a series of investigations.12,175,176 The OPR
was increased from an early design of 46 to a later design of 60.
The future projections have larger values up to 70. However,
the higher OPR results in higher combustion inlet temperature
T3, which will lead to higher NOx emission. In the ERA pro-
ject, the highly loaded front stages of compressor were demon-
strated to realize OPR in a range from 60 to 70,177 and a new
combustor was successfully tested to reduce LTO NOx emis-
sions 88% under the ICAO CAEP/6 standard.178,179
The propulsive efficiency can be improved to a possible
value of 90–95% by reducing fan pressure ratio (FPR = 1.35
or below) with consequent dropping of the fan exhaust velocity
and increasing BPR, combining with the reduction of the pres-
sure losses along the internal flow path. The historical BPR
also has an increasing trend, as shown in Fig. 9(b). The highest
BPR of in-production geared turbofan is larger than 12, and a
near future projection is around 15. In the ERA project, a BPR
of 20.6 for a geared turbofan was studied.12,175,176 However,
for a constant level of thrust, this technology requires that
the effective fan area increases to avoid commensurate incre-
ments in weight, drag, integration losses and fan noise. At
the current state of the art, high flight-speed unducted propul-
sors, such as open rotors, face significant noise, mechanical
complexity, and installation safety concerns that need to be
overcome before they can be considered attractive alternatives
to ducted fans.
The cycle parameters and performance of engines adopted
for BWB designs are given in Table 13. Two architectures,
DD and GTF, are considered. Most of the conceptual engines
have OPR 60, FPR as low as 1.35, and BPR larger than 12. A
lower SFC can be expected.
It can be seen that during the past 70 years, a great progress
has been made on engine design, contributing around half of
the aircraft fuel efficiency. This trend most likely continue by
increasing OPR and BPR. However, the increasing of OPR
and the requirement of NOx reduction should be harmonized.
It will be more difficult for TAW aircraft to adopt larger BPR
engines using under-wing mounting positions. For BWB air-
crafts it provides an opportunity to adopt larger BPR engines
because of upper-surface mounting position. However, this
opportunity also brings challenges which are analyzed in the
following section.
4.6. Propulsion and airframe integration
The layout of BWB aircraft opens new opportunity of propul-
sion and airframe integration, which can result in system ben-
efits of fuel efficiency and noise reduction, but also consequent
special challenges. As new integrations are quite different with
conventional under-wing mounted engine of TAW, no much
database and experiences have been accumulated. Therefore,
most of the studied were carried out by using CFD and wind
tunnel tests.
The BWB concept has been studied with a variety of
propulsion options, including embedded engines, podded engi-
nes in nacelles, direct-drive turbofans, geared turbofans and
open rotors. The engines can also be mounted at different posi-
tions, including conventional under-wing, aft-upper surface of
centerbody, upper wing trailing edge, embedded in the body
with BLI and distributed along the span, as listed in Table 5

Fig. 9 Historical trend of overall pressure ratio and bypass ratio of gas turbine engines.

Table 13 Engine cycle parameters and performances used in BWB studies.

Vehicle application 2010 N + 2 HWB175 2015 LAT176 2016 HWB3012
Architecture DD GTF DD GTF DD GTF
Net thrust (lbf) 15800 16100 13200 12500
Overall pressure ratio 60 60 60 60
Fan pressure ratio 1.482 1.462 1.5 1.35 1.5 1.35
Bypass ratio 14.22 14.95 14.6 20.6 12.85 17.65
Specific fuel consumption 0.5056 0.5021 0.485 0.4644
(lblbf
1h
1)
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
Table 14 PAI concepts and their characteristics.
Position PAI mechanisms Design
method
well-validated
Under-wing Well-understood Yes
Aft upper centerbody Less No
Wing upper-surface Less No
trailing edge
Embedded with BLI Less No
to Table 8 for existing BWB concepts. The characteristics of
these concepts are given in Table 14. Upper surface mounted
concepts are not well studied, lacking design methods, difficult
for maintenance and operations, and having some safety con-
cerns. But all can provide better noise shielding effects. The
most adopted concept is aft-upper-centerbody position that
is analyzed in detail in the following. Several studied are also
summarized.
The location of engines on the aft-upper surface of the cen-
terbody has a unique feature that can provide propulsion noise
shielding, enabling very low flyover noise. However, it also
leads to more complex maintenance and operational issues
comparing with that of the conventional under-wing mounted
engines. In consideration of safety issues, the challenges asso-
ciated with uncontained engine blade burst appear for turbo-
fans and much more severely for open rotor. This risk could
be minimized with newly developed technology and the use
of redundant structure, but having weight penalty. There is
also a potential issue with nose wheel liftoff from pitch-up
when current types of thrust reversers are used.
In the early investigations, the embedded type integration
on the aft-upper surface were heavily studied,45–47 which can
have obvious benefits of reducing friction and ram drag
because of wetted area reduction and low momentum wake
filling, respectively. However, the benefits are also of high risk
due to the penalties on the fan efficiency and stall margin
caused by high total pressure loss and inlet flow distortion.
Hence, the investigations on the fan forced response and dis-
tortion tolerant fan are highly required. As early as in 2005
CFD based design methods for PAI was evaluated within
the UEET project on BWB-450-1L configuration with three
embedded boundary-layer ingestion engines at transonic con-
dition of Mach number 0.85. Their effectiveness was generally
confirmed by high Reynolds number wind tunnel tests. How-
ever, further sensitive numerical and experimental design
methods were recommended to capture small design changes.45
Based on the requirement of ERA, the open rotor was cho-
sen for its potential to provide the greatest fuel burn reduction
relative to all other potential propulsion options for BWB-
OREIO.39 The BWB provides the potential of noise shielding
when the engines are properly mounted on the upper surface,
which can alleviate one of the main drawbacks of the open
rotor. Therefore, the PAI problem of open rotor integrated
with BWB was studied in detail by using CFD method. Open
rotor engines have unique problems relative to turbofans due
to the direct exposure of rotors to flow. When the engines
are mounted on the aft-upper surface of centerbody, where
1819
Noise shielding Maintenance Safety
and operations
No but harmful Easy Good
Good but depends Hard Uncontained engine
on position blade burst
Good for upstream- Hard Uncontained engine
propagated fan noise blade burst
Good Hard Good
the local flow may be of higher Mach number than the free-
stream flow, and can be highly distorted at high angle of attack
or sideslip angle. Both of these features can increase noise and
decrease aircraft performance. At cruise condition, the pylons
have significant amounts of interference drag and a significant
amount of separation happens due to the appearance of strong
shock. At higher power conditions such as takeoff or climb
out, the stream tube of air that goes through the rotors con-
tracts so rapidly that the adverse pressure gradient can be high.
This feature can cause the boundary layer separation and con-
sequence of performance penalty. It was concluded that the
BWB with open rotor must be designed to mitigate these prob-
lems in order to reach fuel burn and noise goals.
To reduce the risk for near term application, podded tur-
bofan engines have been mostly considered. Because the inlet
flow of engines is in the downstream flow of centerbody, the
integration of engines on the pylons near the trailing edge of
upper surface is quite challenging. The interferences between
the propulsion and airframe can be quite complex. On the
one hand, the mounted engine can lead to strong local flow
distortions, which can result in high airframe drag due to
shock formation and/or local flow separation. On the other
hand, the inlet flow of engines can be highly distorted at high
angle of attack or high sideslip angle, which can result in fan
flow instability and engine efficiency reduction. The longitudi-
nal position of the engine is also crucial to the noise shielding
effects of fan and jet noise. Additionally, due to the adoption
of UHB turbofans, the increase in the nacelle drag and
weight are detrimental to the aircraft performance. More
challenges on the short nacelle design, noise reduction and
integration are recognized and strongly depend on engine
position.
Several different mounting locations were tested by TsAGI
on IWB configuration, as shown in Fig. 1078 Wind tunnel tests
revealed that the configuration with two under-wing pylon-
mounted engines is of the most favorable aerodynamic inter-
faces. Four under-wing engines are also acceptable. However,
both configurations with over-wing initial engine positions,
suffer from the early onset of wave drag divergence, although
they can provide engine noise shielding. The configuration
with aft-upper surface mounted engine can be improved by
some modifications, but it still inferior to the configuration
with under-wing mounted engine.78
In the N2A-EXTE development, the PAI was also investi-
gated in detail by using CFD.36 The results of original N2A
show that the local Mach number at the inlet of the nacelle
can be larger than 0.9 at cruise Mach number 0.8, as shown
1820 Z. CHEN et al.

In the framework of EAR projects, the PAI problems

Fig. 10 Experimental aerodynamic model of IWB configura-
tions with different engine positions.78
including drag penalty at cruise condition, inlet flow distor-
tion, power-on effects on stability and control, and engine
operability were studied in detail by combining numerical
and experimental methods.181 Extensive CFD analyses and
optimization studies were performed to minimize installation
drag of the engine nacelle at transonic conditions.182 The con-
tours of centerbody line and nacelles were optimized to elimi-
nate the shock interactions between the nacelles and the body,
as shown in Fig. 12. The refined configuration ERA-0009H1
from the baseline ERA-0009A has only 1.4% drag penalty
of engine installation estimated from CFD analysis.
At low speed a 5.75% scale model183 was tested with flow
through nacelles, powered ejectors and turbine powered simu-
lators to study the high-lift system,119 flow distortion at the
inlet face184 and power effects,185 respectively. The inlet distor-
tion having total pressure ratio as low as 0.95 was observed in
the wind tunnel test of 5.75% scale model of ERA-0009G con-
figuration mounted with flow-through nacelle at a high angle
attack combing a slight sideslip.119 However, the test results
using powered ejectors showed the distortion and pressure
recovery levels were acceptable for engine operability.184
Inlet flow characteristics of the model scale and full scale
were also performed using CFD method to compare measured
and predicted distortion levels, respectively.186 Compared to
flow-through nacelle testing on the same BWB model, the con-
trol surface effectiveness, pitching moment and drag were
found to increase with the turbine powered simulator units
operating. However, the improved control surface perfor-
mance must be balanced with engine performance and acous-
tics in a comprehensive airframe design.185 The engine
response to the inlet distortion was predicted based on a cou-

Fig. 11 Challenges of PAI of N2A.36

in Fig. 11(a). Therefore, the nacelle design method for conven-

tional wing mounted engines should be revised.
To achieve shielding of downwards propagating engine
noise, the engine pods are in local flow of high Mach number,
which leads to appearance of strong shocks over the nacelles
and corresponding flow separations, as shown in Fig. 11(b).
This introduces further challenges to minimize adverse PAI
effects. Meanwhile, a significant loss in lift is observed due to
that the inlet spillage disrupts the lift generating flow circula-
tion over the centerbody. The remedies by shifting nacelle axial
location and height over the body and by increasing inlet mass
flow to reduce flow spillage were found ineffective. To alleviate
these adverse PAI effects, the aft-body was extended by 10%
to allow engine nacelle locating in lower Mach number flow
with additional benefits of noise shielding and longitudinal
control authority enhancing. Redesigns of the centerbody lines
with dishing and outer cowl lines were implemented. The final
design can recover the L/D of N2A with less compressibility
drag compensating the friction drag due to aft-body extension.
However, the increased surface area did increase weight as well
as absolute drag so there was an increase in fuel burn. How-
Fig. 12 Nacelle and fuselage reshaping to reduce transonic drag
ever, N2A-EXTE configuration shows unacceptable flow
at cruise condition.182
characteristics for engine operability.180
Assessment on critical technologies for conceptual design of blended-wing-body civil aircraft
pled inlet-fan CFD simulation. Separate analyses were per-
formed to assess performance, fan operability, core engine
operability, and fan blade vibratory stress. It was concluded
that, for all the inlet distortion cases that were within the
expected operational envelope of the PSC aircraft, the engine
operability and fan blade stress metrics were determined to
be within acceptable limits, and there were relatively small
impacts to engine performance.187
It can be concluded that the aft-upper centerbody mounting
position of the podded engines is an option with most possibil-
ity and low risk. However, the interactions between airframe
and the engines should be studied in detail and be enhanced
at off-design conditions on aircraft stability and control and
engine operability. A detailed aerodynamic design of PAI
was performed on NPU-330 and was presented in Ref.188 in
this volume.
5. Overall efficiency evaluation
Aircraft fuel efficiency is very critical for unconventional BWB
aircraft, which is an aircraft level measure in terms of engine,
aerodynamic and structural performance. It is also closely
related to the emissions for environmental concerns. Only pro-
viding higher aircraft fuel efficiency BWB aircraft can earn its
way for future application.
Different parameters can be used to indicate aircraft fuel
efficiency. Energy intensity in terms of energy consumed per
seat kilometer for various aircraft types was used by Lee et al.93
as an indication. It was also extended as a metric to assess var-
ious scenarios of aviation development. A fuel efficiency metric
named Payload Fuel Efficiency (PFE) was defined by Green189
using Breguet equation in terms of range, payload weight, and
Fig. 13 Comparisons of ETRW for TAW and BWB aircrafts.
Table 15 ETRW comparisons of across different aircraft sizes between BWB and TAW.
Aircraft type ETRW/reduction (%)
PAX 100-199 PAX 200-299
Airbus 0.887 1.177
Boeing 0.928 1.163
BWB-0.40* 0.675/
25.6 0.711/
39.2
BWB-0.45* 0.592/
34.7 0.626/
46.5
TAW-200512 1.165
HWB-GTF12 0.637/
45.3
Notes: BWB-0.40* = BWB with go ¼ 0:4; BWB-0.45* = BWB with go ¼ 0:45.
1821
mission fuel weight. It was used as a figure of merit to examine
optimal aircraft design range for minimal fuel use. A Payload
Fuel Energy Efficiency (PFEE) was introduced by Hileman
et al.190 as a metric to quantify the energy efficiency of aviation
on the fleet level for aviation environmental performance.
Through literature review, it can be observed that the pre-
dicted fuel benefit of BWB over TAW varies significantly
between studies, due to differences in design requirements, sys-
tem architectures, as well as study ground rules and technology
assumptions. A non-dimensional fuel efficiency parameter,
ETRW, introduced by Poll24 based on Breguet equation is
adopted here to evaluate the fuel efficiency of BWB aircraft,
in terms of engine overall, aerodynamic and structural efficien-
cies. The ETRW can be written as





1 OEM 1 1
kexpð
XÞ
ETRW ¼ 1þ
ðgo L=DÞmax PM X kexpð
XÞ
b
ð3Þ
 
where PM is the payload; X ¼ g  R= LCVðgo L=DÞmax is non-
dimensional range (LCV is the lower calorific value of the fuel,
R is the range and g is the gravitational acceleration constant);
k ¼ 1
e, where e is the lost fuel index, and a value of 0.015 is
used; b  0:04 þ 0:01b0 based on FAR regulations, where
b0 ¼ 1
kexpð
XÞ.
The comparisons of fuel efficiency between TAW and BWB
aircrafts across whole size range are shown in Fig. 13. To
exclude the effects of early TAW the aircrafts of Boeing and
Airbus are included after first flight year 1981 and 1987,
respectively. The mean ETRW for TAW of Boeing and
BWB concepts with go ¼ 0:4 are 1.014, 1.011 and 0.694,
respectively, as shown in Table 15. The fuel efficiency of
BWB is about 31.5% better than that of TAW almost across
the aircraft size. The worst BWB concept is AGILE-BWB
due to its inferior L/D of 18.73 When more advanced engine
technologies resulting go ¼ 0:45 is used, the savings can be as
high as 40.0%. To exhibit the effects of the payloads, the mean
values of ETRW across the aircrafts with different PAX and
the assessments at the end of ERA project12 are compared in
Table 15. The benefit of BWB increases from 25.6% to
45.3% as PAX increases from the range 100–199 to the range
200–299 at go ¼ 0:4, which is 34.7–52.2% at go ¼ 0:45 corre-
spondingly. When the PAX is equal or larger than 400, the
benefit of BWB decreases in the present prediction, which is
due to that most of the large BWBs are studied much earlier
than the smaller versions. However, the recent NASA assess-
ments still confirm the aforementioned conclusion.12
PAX 300-399 PAX 400 All type mean
0.884 1.190 1.011
1.069 1.172 1.014
0.534/
45.3 0.767/
35.1 0.694/3
1.5
0.467/
52.2 0.668/
43.5 0.607/
40.0
0.740 0.821
0.393/
47.0 0.415/
49.4
1822
6. Conclusions and outlook
Blended-wing-body aircraft has emerged from past decades’
investigations as potential architecture replacing conventional
tube-and-wing aircraft to satisfy the requirements of growing
markets, more stringent regulations and sustainable aviation.
The developments of this concept in different nations were
analyzed in a historical perspective. The enabling technologies
including aerodynamic design, structure concepts for non-
circular pressurized cabin, stability and control, and propul-
sion and airframe integration were scrutinized. The enhancing
technologies including noise reduction, engine advancements
were also discussed. The aircraft-level fuel efficiency was eval-
uated and compared with that of conventional aircrafts. The
following conclusions can be drawn
(1) Four different concepts including tube and wing, hybrid
wing body, blended wing body and flying wing were cat-
egorized based on the principle of the forms following
the function.
(2) The high aerodynamic efficiency of blended-wing-body
aircraft comes from large mean aerodynamic chord
and high wetted aspect ratio, which can be well scaled
using these two parameters including that of tube and
wing aircraft.
(3) The trade-offs among stability and control, cruise aero-
dynamic design and low-speed aerodynamic design have
been realized but have not been well investigated. A per-
ceptible trend to extend the centerbody length can be a
potential solution.
(4) The integrated shell and skin concept using pultruded
rod stitched efficient unitized structure is the most
promising solution for non-circular pressurized cabin.
However, the weight penalty and weight prediction of
new structures are still of large uncertainty. The struc-
ture efficiency is inferior to that of tube-and-wing air-
craft based on the published blended-wing-body design.
(5) There are no static stability margins that can ensure
dynamic characteristics. Since stability and control and
flying qualities are closely related, clear criteria are
required for flying qualities evaluation, stability and
control design, and flight control low design.
(6) The airframe noise sources become dominant due to the
adoption of ultra-high bypass ratio engines and the
noise shielding. The higher operating angle of attack
and local flow speed lead to specific noise feature of
high-lift device and landing gears.
(7) The propulsion and airframe integration is quite difficult.
During the integration, aerodynamic efficiency, noise
reduction, and engine operability should be balanced.
(8) At the aircraft-level the mean fuel efficiency of blended-
wing body is more than 31.5% better than the existent
tube-and-wing design. More improvement can be
expected by adopting advanced technologies.
Further investigations are expected
(1) New structural layout of the whole blended-wing-body
aircraft needs to be explored using like topology opti-
mization method.
Z. CHEN et al.
(2) The effects of structural displacement (mainly the defor-
mation of the centerbody) on the cruise aerodynamic
efficiency need to be evaluated.
(3) The safety issues related to certification including uncon-
tained engine blade burst, thrust reverser and evacuation
need to be investigated in detail.
(4) The effects of flight speed on the noise shielding and air-
frame noise reduction need to be investigated.
(5) A blended-wing-body concept needs to go further out-
side of the conceptual design stage to exhibit more
potentials and problems.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities (Nos. 3102019JC009 and
G2016KY0002).
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