A New Methodology For Aerodynamic Design and Analysis of A Small Scaleblended Wing Body 2168 9792 1000206 PDF
A New Methodology For Aerodynamic Design and Analysis of A Small Scaleblended Wing Body 2168 9792 1000206 PDF
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DOI: 10.4172/2168-9792.1000206
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ISSN: 2168-9792
Abstract
The blended wing body (BWB) concept is a relatively new concept of an aircraft. The wings and the fuselage blend
into one integral structure greatly reduce drag and increases lift thus making it a highly efficient design. The aim of the
research was to design a radio controlled small scale BWB aircraft for use over long ranges at low altitudes in order
to deliver payloads. The BWB was divided into the center body and the outer wing. Four airfoils, HS522, LA2573A,
NACA 25111 and MH78 were analyzed in XFLR5. In consideration of their lift and moment characteristics, NACA
25111 and MH78 were selected for the center body and the wing respectively. The stall speed and wing loading were
the primary factors used in determining the area and size of the aircraft which converged to a design having a five feet
wingspan. Center of gravity was placed ahead of aerodynamic center to provide static and dynamic stability in pitch.
Twist, dihedral and sweep were given to increase stability and controllability. The final design was tested in XFLR5 for
stability and in commercial computational fluid dynamic code ANSYS-Fluent for comparison. These simulation results
were compared to wind tunnel tests of a 20% scaled down prototype. 3D Panel Method results in XFLR5 were found
to be very close to wind tunnel results but CFD results were seen to be not conforming to the wind tunnel results after
10° angle of attack. Thus, CFD was deemed to be unnecessary for designing a plane of this size. Ultimately, a larger
test prototype was made out of polystyrene foam and a successful flight was achieved.
Keywords: Blended Wing Body (BWB); XFLR5; Computational data from flight tests or previous experiments. This issue was addressed
Fluid Dynamics (CFD); Small Scale Aircraft; Wind tunnel; Stability by Martinez [7] in his research. He optimized the control surfaces
area and achieved a 12% reduction in area from his baseline design,
Introduction consequently reducing the drag and weight of the aircraft [7]. This
showed that stability issues can be solved by design thus proving a BWB
The conventional tube and wing design has been popular for
superior in all aspects. Thomson et al. [4] made a 5-meter wingspan
several decades and has nearly reached its asymptote of efficiency BWB unmanned air vehicle (UAV). Stability was improved by moving
around the size of an Airbus A380 [1]. Depleting world resources have center of gravity in front of the center of pressure and by using reflex
promulgated the need for developing higher efficiency air vehicles to airfoils to reduce aerodynamic moments [4]. Dehpanah and Nejat [8]
reduce fuel consumption, environmental impact and cost. Blended placed an external mass that could move along the centerline to provide
Wing Body (BWB) is a new and novel concept that is gaining popularity stability in pitch. Kuntawala [2] had added dihedral, twist, and sweep in
very rapidly and promises a revolutionary change in the future of the outer wing of the BWB to improve its stability and delay stall.
aviation [1]. The blending of the wings with the fuselage makes it
aerodynamically more efficient. It does not have a tail that significantly XFLR5 is very reliable software for modeling small planes but not
for large aircrafts [9]. Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) and 3D-Panel
contributes to drag generation [2]. Majority of lift is created by center
Method are two common methods for analyzing planes in XFLR5. VLM
body [2] thus eliminating the aerodynamically redundant fuselage from
is independent of the wind speed (is linear) and will give reliable results
the conventional configuration [3,4].
for all kinds of wings [9]. The 3D-Panel method is a refined form of
In the first attempt, NASA Langley Research Center funded VLM and takes into account the full 3D characteristics. It takes wing
McDonnell Douglas [5] to design an aircraft carrying 800 passengers thickness in consideration whereas VLM only considers the mean
with a 7000-n mile range at Mach 0.85. The team considered a sphere, camber line [9]. XFLR5 has been used by Martinez [1] in analyzing
a cylinder and a disk, capable of carrying 800 passengers load. The disk wings and a BWB model at Mach 0.3 by VLM and 3D-Panel methods to
configuration turned out to be the best option because of its lesser wetted find lift, drag and stability of an aircraft. It was also used by Hassanalian
area [5]. This led to the BWB being the best design for the purpose. Further, et al. [10] to design a micro air vehicle and the analysis of its lift and
Lieback in his article explained that since the disc configuration has a drag forces.
33% lesser wetted area and cruise lift to drag ratio is related to the wetted
area aspect ratio, b2/Swet ; the BWB configuration is significantly better in
all aspects [3]. A comparative study between a BWB and a conventional *Corresponding author: Cheema TA, Department of Mechanical Engineering, GIK
Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi, 23460, KPK, Pakistan, Tel:
aircraft was carried out by Ikeda [6]. A conventional Airbus A380 +92-938-271858; E-mail: tacheema@giki.edu.pk
was taken as the reference and a BWB was designed keeping the same
Received January 08, 2018; Accepted January 24, 2018; Published January 31,
mission profile requirements and a constraint of maximum wingspan 2018
of 80m due to airport restrictions. Simplified models for both aircrafts
Citation: Baig AZ, Cheema TA, Aslam Z, Khan YM, Sajid Dar H, et al. (2018) A
were made in Computer Aided Design and simulated in Computational New Methodology for Aerodynamic Design and Analysis of a Small Scale Blended
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. The BWB greatly surpassed the A380 in Wing Body. J Aeronaut Aerospace Eng 7: 206. doi: 10.4172/2168-9792.1000206
aerodynamic performance and efficiency [6]. Copyright: © 2018 Baig AZ, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
There are significant stability challenges with the BWB design. It use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
does not have a tail and as the concept is novel it does not have enough source are credited.
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XFLR5 analysis
The plane was analyzed in XFLR5 for lift and stability in pitch and yaw.
It can be seen from Figure 6 that the lift has nearly a linear relation
with AoA. With increasing AoA, the lift also increases thus is making
sense and is very intuitive. This can be corroborated by the graphs
[8,14]. The curve in Figure 7 is downward sloping which entails that:
∂CM (3)
C =
Mα ∂α
And this is an essential condition for static longitudinal stability Figure 9: Dynamic response of yaw disturbance with time.'
[13]. Although the line does not pass directly through the origin, trim
conditions can be applied to achieve stability at any desired angle of
attack [14]. Further, Figures 8 and 9 show the dynamic stability in pitch
and yaw respectively. After a disturbance is given to the aircraft it will
oscillate and return to its stable state. Thus the aircraft is both statically
and dynamically stable.
Fluent analysis
CFD analysis was performed to find the lift and drag more
accurately. A 3D steady flow solver was used with the simple algorithm.
A free tetrahedral mesh was used mainly because of the complex
geometry [17] involved and a body of influence was given in the
downwash region to capture the effects of downwash very precisely.
Inflation was applied at the boundary to improve resolution. The image
of the mesh is shown in Figure 10. The one equation model Spalart-
Allmaras was used. The Spalart-Allmaras model is designed specifically
Figure 7: Variation in CM at various angle of attack.
for aerospace applications involving wall-bounded flows and has been
shown to give good results for boundary layers subjected to adverse
pressure gradients [18]. Spalart-Allmaras model is effectively a low-
Reynolds-number model, requiring the viscosity-affected region of
the boundary layer to be properly resolved [18]. The model has a wall
bounded flow, is a low Reynold number flow (because of low speeds
and small aircraft), and the viscosity affected region, the boundary
layer, analysis is crucial. Thus, it matches the problem setup. A mesh
independence study was carried out using five different meshes. The
final mesh took approximately 30 hours to converge on an i7-3400U
processer at 3.4 GHz.
The pressure contours in Figure 11 show the highest pressure, the
Figure 8: Dynamic response of pitch disturbance with time.
stagnation point, at the nose tip. The pressure over the center body is
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Conclusion
The center body and outer wing approach that was used in
designing the blended wing body turned out to be a relatively simple
but powerful approach. Through this approach, the task of airfoil
selection was made easier and more intuitive – a high lift airfoil was the
criteria of the center body and a high moment airfoil was the criteria
of the outer wing. It was also relatively simple to deal with stall speed
and the wing loading because no averaging of coefficient of lifts for
different airfoils was required when only the center body was used for
calculations. Also, after outlaying the seven sections (Table 1) it was
Figure 12: CL against AoA from wind tunnel, CFD, VL method and 3D panel easy to decide where to give dihedral, twist or sweep. The design then
method. underwent analysis in XFLR5, CFD and wind tunnel. The results were
compared and wind tunnel results matched most closely with 3D Panel
Method results in XFLR5. CFD was deemed to be unnecessary for
designing a small scale BWB. The design made in this research is highly
efficient and stable. The same process can be used for designing larger
BWBs such as to be used as UAVs, parcel delivery, etc. There is still
room for doing extensive CFD analysis and assessing the possibility of
it being better than XFLR5. It is also possible to further improve this
design by performing optimization or iterative studies by changing the
twist, dihedral and sweep and noting its effect of lift, drag and moment.
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Figure 13: The carbon fiber model that was tested. 3. Liebeck RH (2004) Design of the blended wing body subsonic transport. J
Aircraft 41:10-25.
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