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Blended wing body structural concept development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

A. Velicki
Affiliation:
The Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, California, USA
P. Thrash
Affiliation:
The Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, California, USA

Abstract

A lightweight robust airframe design is one of the key technological advancements necessary for the successful launch of a blended wing body aircraft. The non-circular pressure cabin dictates that substantial improvements beyond current state-of-the-art aluminium and composite structures is needed, and that improvements of this magnitude will require radically new airframe design and manufacturing practices. Such an approach is described in this paper. It is a highly integrated structural concept that is tailored and optimised to fully exploit the orthotropic nature and unique processing advantages inherent in dry carbon fibres, while also employing stitching to enable a unique damage-arrest design approach.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 2010 

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