Jun

NASA’s Blended Wing Body Aircraft Picks Up Speed

Posted by admin Published in Air Travel

Boeing and NASA continue to push forward with evaluating of their X-48B blended wing body (BWB) research aircraft. Boeing engineers say the blended wing body design is about 30-percent more fuel efficient than a similarly sized conventional aircraft carrying an equivalent payload.

“We want to fully understand the aerodynamics of the blended wing body
design all the way up to and beyond stall, so that we can memorize how to
fly a blended wing body aircraft as safely as any other large transport
aircraft with a conventional tail,” say Norm Princen, the X-48B chief
engineer.

The X-48B is a collaboration within Boeing’s Phantom Works unit, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). They’re developing the plane to investigate the potential of a blended wing body design, which

uses a triangular-shaped wing fused to the fuselage, rather than the tube-wing-tail design of traditional aircraft.

They’ve scheduled a total of eight flights for what they are referring
to as the Block 2 phase. In Block 2, a 500-pound, remotely piloted tryout
vehicle will fly at up to 125 miles per hour without its slats
deployed. Slats are flight control surfaces on wings’ main edges allow an aircraft to take off, fly, and land at lower speeds when extended.

Industry experts believe a blended wing body military aircraft could be in service
within 10 to 15 years, depending on funding and the speed of evaluating.

Photo by NASA

Original post by Dave Demerjian