Conceptual Aircraft Design Activities Related to Blended Wing Body Configurations in the Scope of the DLR Project SIAM

In the scope of the DLR project SIAM, new low noise concepts for short- and medium range aircraft are investigated. This paper describes the activities related to the blended wing body-type configurations. It comprises a brief project overview, the blended wing body concept background, the description of methods applied, the actual aircraft design activities and the corresponding results. The studies indicate a strong impact of handling quality requirements and of a limited high lift performance. The resulting concept is a blended wing body with a T-tail that shows a significant noise impact reduction (8-14dB) compared to an advanced tube-and-wing baseline