Preliminary Sizing of a Medium Range Blended Wing-Body using a Multidisciplinary Design Analysis Approach

The aviation's goal for the next decades is to drastically reduce emissions, but to achieve this goal a breakdown in aircraft design have to be considered. One of the most promising concept is the Blended Wing-Body, which integrates aerodynamics, propulsion and structure, and has a better aerodynamics efficiency, thanks to the reduction of the wetted surfaces. In this work the feasibility of a short/medium range BWB with 150 passengers (A320 type aircraft, Entry Into Service 2035) is studied, considering different disciplines into the sizing process. To supply the lack of reference data, an approach that goes from high fidelity to validate low fidelity models has been set up. Also certification aspects have been taken into account in an off-design analysis. To evaluate the advantages of the proposed concept, it has been compared with an aircraft of the same class, the A320 Neo, resized to match the EIS2035 hypothesis: results show that the BWB is a concept that shows a gain in fuel consumption, especially on longer ranges