Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization of the Blended Wing Body Configuration SMILE
Creators: name:  J. GAUVRIT-LEDOGAR 
name:   A. TREMOLET 
name:   S. DEFOORT 
name:   F. MOREL 
name:   R. LIABOEUF 
name:   M. MEHEUT 
Publisher: name: Proceedings of  the 9th European Conference for Aerospace Sciences. Lille, France, 27 June - 1 July, 2022
Year: 2022
Subjects: SYSTEM INTEGRATION
SYSTEM APPROACH

description: The global aviation industry is currently facing a huge challenge for the design of future passenger transport aircraft with the aim of achieving substantial performance improvement and reduction of air transport environmental footprint (reduction of fuel consumption, reduction of pollutant emissions and reduction of noise emissions) compared with existing aircraft. In such a context, the Blended Wing Body configuration appears to be one of the most promising new architectures to replace the classical Tube and Wing configuration. The typical features of the Blended Wing Body (BWB) configuration is that each subsystem, as propulsion, control surfaces, pressurized cabin, etc. is integrated to a single wing shaped body. Thus, the design of such geometry imposes to consider, at the same level of the overall aircraft design process, disciplines all together such as aerodynamics, structure, propulsion, handling qualities, etc. Therefore, the use of multidisciplinary approaches is crucial in order to take into account the complex couplings between disciplines involved in its design and optimization, and provide consolidated figures of merit of the achievable performance. From 2015, ONERA builds a Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) approach dedicated to BWB configurations with the implication of experts in aerodynamics, structure, propulsion, handling qualities, aeroelasticity, acoustics, aircraft performance, aircraft overall architectures and MDAO. This approach and the associated MDAO process developed come from the internal research project CICAV funded by ONERA from 2015 to 2019. This project involved four of the seven ONERA scientific departments. The MDAO process dedicated to BWB configurations is composed of the following disciplinary modules: Geometry module for internal pressurized body sizing and overall airframe definition Propulsion module for engine performance assessment Structure module for primary structure sizing, weight and balance computation Aerodynamics module for aerodynamic performance evaluation Mission module for performance assessment with regard to the specified mission Handling Qualities module for handling qualities assessment The process is integrated within the NASA OpenMDAO framework. In the frame of the European Clean Sky 2 project (Airframe ITD platform), ONERA uses this MDAO process to design and optimize a BWB configuration for a short-medium range mission. This work results in the Small - Medium range Integrated Light and Efficient (SMILE) BWB configuration. The paper proposes to present the ONERA multidisciplinary approach dedicated to BWB configurations and to detail the results obtained about the SMILE configuration. The paper is organised as follows. The first section gives more insight in the BWB MDAO process with a description of all disciplinary modules integrated along with the design and optimization methodologies applied. The second section describes the SMILE configuration and illustrates its overall geometry with a 3D view including the internal layout (passenger cabin, cargo hold, landing gears housing, fuel tanks, etc.). Among the results, the following items are detailed and discussed: Geometry and airframe, including the cargo hold and passenger cabin layout Propulsion performance within the overall flight envelop Aerodynamic characteristics within the overall flight envelop Mass breakdown and center of gravity position for several flight configurations Performance for its commercial transport mission Longitudinal handling qualities about both ground and take-off phases and some critical flight conditions.