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UAS Applications
Published in R. Kurt Barnhart, Douglas M. Marshall, Eric J. Shappee, Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 2021
According to the PUCA website, UCA will be an improvement over manned cargo aircraft in many different areas. The duty length of the crew will not be an issue, so cruising speed can be optimized, most likely around 450 km/h, to consume less fuel. The low cruising speed will make it possible to use small unpaved runways. LUCA do not need a pressurized cabin so that they can be made lighter and simpler. Because the cross section of the fuselage does not need to be circular, as is the case with a pressurized cabin, it can be shaped efficiently to fit, for example, square cargo containers. The cargo area can be relatively small because no humans need to be accommodated. This gives designers the opportunity to use shapes like a Blended Wing Body (BWB) or flying wing as seen in Figure 2.13, which is 15–20% more aerodynamically efficient than a conventional aircraft shape. The future LUCA concept aircraft was provided by PUCA and developed by the students of the Technical University of Delft Netherlands.
Commercial Aircraft
Published in Scott Jackson, Systems Engineering for Commercial Aircraft, 2020
New aerodynamic techniques include the use of pressure sensitive paint and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). These technologies will allow multipoint wing design that attains the lowest cruise drag characteristics and the highest realistic buffet onset boundary. Another goal is efficient aerodynamic profiles for wings with large high by-pass ratio (HBPR) engines. Another effort is the aerodynamically efficient but low-cost high lift systems. Studies have shown (Martínez-Val, 1994) that greater range and payload capability can be achieved with a third horizontal surface, or canard, located on the forward fuselage. Another concept of aircraft configuration is the blended wing-body (BWB), which resembles a large manta ray. This concept is described further below.
Meso-scale damage analysis of three-dimensional textile stitched composite subjected to compression loading
Published in The Journal of The Textile Institute, 2023
Hossein Safaei, Ehsan Selahi, Hamid Reza Faham, Mohammad Azadi
Stitched composites are made by inserting a fiber in the direction of thickness using stitching processes. The main roles of the resin are transferring stresses between the fibers. It also acts as a glue to hold the fibers together. These composites play a vital role not only in the development of faster and lighter aircraft but also in the reduction of production costs. Aerospace corporations such as NASA, Boeing, and Airbus are looking for ways to create large transport airplanes that are more efficient and effective to fly (Tomich & Clarke, 2019). They are attempting to replace current commercial aircraft designs with tubular fuselages and attached wings with more efficient blended wing body (BWB) aircraft, which are fixed-wing aircraft with no line between the wings and the main body of the aircraft.
Actuator energy and drag minimization of a blended-wing-body with variable-camber continuous trailing-edge flaps
Published in Engineering Optimization, 2020
Dating back to the 1990s, NASA and its industry partners found that the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) has several advantages over conventional tube-and-wing airframes, including improved aerodynamic efficiency and reduced fuel consumption (Liebeck, Page, and Rawdon 1998; Liebeck 2004). Research studies on the BWB have shown that it can achieve N+2 metric goals set by NASA for its Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) program (Kawai 2011). The BWB showed a remarkable performance improvement in reducing the takeoff weight by 15%, the fuel burn rate per seat by 27% (Liebeck 2004), and dB noise reduction (Kawai 2011) as compared with current transports. Being tailless, the BWB has improved aerodynamic efficiency over the traditional tube-and-wing aircraft. However, as summarized by several studies (Roman, Allen, and Liebeck 2000; Liebeck 2004; Wildschek 2014; Okonkwo 2016), there are many challenging problems for the unconventional BWB design, including flight mechanics and control, aerodynamics, structure, passenger acceptance, ride quality and so on. One of them is to achieve standards of stability and control similar to those of conventional aircraft. Because the tailless aircraft have very short moment arms for both pitch and directional controls, multiple control surfaces are considered for the BWB (Liebeck 2004).
Failure analysis of 3D stitched composite using multi-scale approach for aerospace structures
Published in The Journal of The Textile Institute, 2025
Abbasali Saboktakin, Fatima Kalaoglu, Mehran Shahrooz, C. Spitas, Said Farahat
According to the literature, aerospace companies such as NASA, Boeing, and Airbus are looking for ways to build large transport aircraft more efficiently and more effectively to fly (Tomich & Clarke, 2019). They try to replace current commercial aircraft designs having tubular fuselage and attached wings with more efficient aircraft called Blended Wing Body (BWB) are fixed-wing aircraft having no line between the wings and the main body of the aircraft (Thrash, 2014). In this aircraft, a fuselage entirely is integrated and blended with the aircraft wings based on the design, manufacture, and test stitched composite structures significantly decreases the use of fasteners and rivets in aircraft.