Preliminary Unconventional Aircraft Design

Abstract

The new global economic challenges push airlines to adapt their policies to it. They are constantly looking for reductions in operating costs, either in terms fuel consumption, maitenance, or environmental taxes. Therefore, they impose constraints on their manufacturers so that they provide lighter aircraft, more silent, and with more optimized aerodynamics. With current aircraft con gurations, manufacturers realize that they can not satisfy the required speci cations.Many researches are currently being conducted to nd new aircraft con gurations that could respond to these speci cations. The ying wing is one of the possibilities within the research panorama. The general idea of the ying wing is the following: in order to increase its performance, all parts not involved in the lift generation are removed, as the fuselage and n. The fact that the whole aircraft participates in lift generation would, a priori, decrease the drag. Speci cally, while a conventional aircraft has a relatively heterogeneous distribution of large masses(the fuselage containing the entire payload), the ying wing provides a more homogeneous distribution. Indeed, as fuel and cargo are distributed over a greater lateral surface, shear loads are less important and contributes to lighten the aircraft. Finally, due to the width of the central body, the ying wing has the ability to mask the noise made by the engines, reducing noise impact to airport and its vicinity. Therefore, it will lead not only to reduction of taxes but also to increase authorized operating time of their eet. That is why in recent years, Airbus has increased its experience in the eld of ying wings participating in European projects VELA and NACRE. Since 2007, new projects are developing: the ying wing project New Long Range (NLR) and the ying wing New Short Range (NSR). This study is focused in the design of a new baseline for the New Short Range ying wing and to evaluate its mass and its handling qualities performance.