Aerodynamic and Stability Analysis of Blended Wing Body Aircraft

The main purpose of the paper is to study the aerodynamic and stability characteristics of a blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft. This paper presents the estimation and selection of aircraft design parameters, planform design, reflex airfoils, and conduct thorough stability investigation of the aircraft. A conceptual design of BWB aircraft has been done and the design was analyzed and refined to achieve static stability. The CFD analysis of the BWB aircraft was done at three different values of angle-of-attack (AOA) and thus the stall AOA was determined from the computational results. The dynamic stability of the aircraft has been studied under five modes namely- short period, phugoid, Dutch-roll, roll and spiral. The static stability has been achieved with a wide positive value of static margin. Results also show that the aircraft is dynamically stable for longitudinal and lateral modes when subjected to disturbances in respective conditions. The BWB aircraft fulfils the criteria of Class I Category B aircraft and shows flight level 1 characteristics in all stability modes.