Traditionally, fuselage present in aircraft is considered dead weight and requires huge wings to keep the plane in the sky. However, in blended-wing design, overall aircraft structure encourages lift-This makes it lighter and smaller than the presently available designs. Furthermore, it can carry potentially the same payload, same as other plane.
Airbus, a multinational aerospace corporation, is in the middle of testing a radical-looking plane that is 10ft wide. Its structure resembles a flying wedge, clinically known as blended-wing design. The corporation has titled the plane as Maveric and is currently in the midst of investigating how the airplane's configuration will work. The design is expected to have great potential and may end up as small as a passenger jet.
These continuous tests by the company and some other world leaders in the market is considered as a positive development for Aerospace Industry as it may lead to lower emissions in the coming future. Such experiments may also inspire exemplary aircraft to come up in the industry.
In parallel to “Maveric,” another research explores an even more radical idea, wherein a new type of aircraft is being developed. It is expected to be 20% more efficient than state-of-the-art aircraft currently present in the market.
The design is known as “Flying – V,” which is a long-haul aircraft with the potential to be more efficient than aircraft like Airbus A350. Similar to Airbus’ “Maveric,” it has moved forward from the idea of using conventional fuselage. Here, researchers have made a structure that resembles an arrowhead with two wings going in a V behind the cockpit. The wings will seat the passengers as well. The designers believe that this form of aircraft would be much cheaper to build than blended wings as the two wings making the V could be plugged into the remaining fuselage. Hence, it would give one the freedom of building the aircraft in parts instead of all at once. The researchers are optimistic that their efforts will result in the manufacturing of relatively low costs aircraft.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Aerospace Industry has seen a slump in demand and so lowering manufacturing costs is the need of the hour while the environmental impact also needs to be taken care of. This is a big hurdle in front of this industry, and researches like this may bring an effective solution sooner or later.