The days of non-traditional airplane designs have come!

The design of modern aircraft took shape in the 1950s: A metal tube with swept-back wings with jet engines hanging from the bottom. That design has made it easy for you to move thousands of trees back and forth, but today there are new studies, studies that will yield something very new, maybe something that will take you on a journey. calendar in the late 2030s.

Non-traditional aircraft designs such as the Blended-wing Body (BWB), also known as the One-Wing, have been in use for many years in the military. The unibody wing design, as the name suggests, is the combination of the wing and the cabin as one. Scientists at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) say that now, concerns about climate change and the growing need for new materials are also driving non-traditional designs. the other has a chance to get closer to reality.

Nearly every design alternative to increase aerodynamic efficiency has been adopted on modern aircraft, the new aircraft design must be better to meet environmental and economic standards, as yet forced aircraft manufacturers to gather at the design table.

Currently, aircraft design is mainly based on graphical simulations or small prototypes, but NASA changed this by launching a competition between US units, requiring the design of the aircraft. Design and build life-size prototypes. The rules of this competition require “competitors” to aim for a narrow-body aircraft similar in size to a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, capable of accommodating 150 passengers. NASA has set a deadline for these prototypes to be flown by 2027 and ready for commercial production within the next decade.

NASA won’t comment on the proposals until September 2027, but the agency has talked about unusual designs that researchers and aircraft manufacturers have seen. can do; in which it is mentioned that the aircraft has a flying wing-like design, capable of accommodating 10 people sitting in the horizontal row – while narrow-body aircraft such as Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 only have 6 people per row, other models do not. thin, long, and foldable wings, some designs even attaching a rear-facing propeller to the rear of the aircraft.

10 years ago, NASA held a similar contest, aimed at the effectiveness of the design rather than the commerciality it could bring. Now they are aiming for aircraft models that are efficient and can change the emissions of the entire aviation industry. Mr. Brent Cobleig, NASA’s Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities Project Manager, said: “We’ve had 20 years of working with cutting-edge designs, but I still haven’t seen anything like it at the airport since the last time I flew.”

Aircraft designs can be divided into three main design groups. These designs are said by the contest participants to be expected to appear prominently in the competition. These designs bear fancy names such as Transonic Truss-braced Wing, Blending-wing Body, and Twin Body. from: Double Bubble). These fine words also show how their design has been different from today’s traditional aircraft designs.

NASA uses only $1 billion of its fiscal 2023’s $26 billion budget for aeronautics, roughly the same levels as in previous years, but officials say NASA is still having an impact on every department. aircraft parts today. NASA also intends to reduce the budget of the space segment to serve the construction and testing of the winning design that NASA will announce in January. The planes of this century, developed by Airbus and Boeing alone, would require at least $10 billion, so any other model would require new capital.

Professor R. John Hansman, head of the International Center for Air Transportation of the Massachusetts Institute of Science, USA, said the new designs are expected to increase efficiency. improved fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, mainly due to reduced aerodynamic drag.

Single-wing and twin-body designs have rounded fuselages, and use the fuselage itself to increase lift instead of relying solely on the wings as in traditional airliners.

With the Subsonic Reinforced Wing, the aircraft will still have a conventional tubular cabin but will be designed for maximum aerodynamic efficiency and can increase cabin pressure, helping passengers Guests can breathe easier. The aircraft will have thinner and longer wings to reduce drag in flight, but will have to be more elaborately designed and need additional wing support, reducing pressure at the connection point to the fuselage.

While the two giants of the aviation industry, Boeing and Airbus, are always developing unusual designs, the aviation industry in general will choose the less expensive method – improving on the conventional design. Aircraft manufacturers often don’t want to be the vanguard because the cost of investing in a completely new design is too great.

Frequent visitors of the aviation industry support the goal of reducing the carbon footprint (rough translation: Carbon Footprint) but will always come with the question of economics. John Plueger, chief executive officer of Air Lease (one of the world’s largest aircraft leasing units) shared: “Is the world ready to pay for it?”

“If we don’t do it, there won’t be any change,” said Rich Wahls at the US Sustainable Flight Cooperation Program (the organizer of the aircraft design competition). […] We have to quickly apply these designs to existing aircraft in order to make a positive climate change.”

The participating teams must show that their design can be mass-produced with a minimum quantity of 60 pieces/month. This competition also parallels the aviation industry’s efforts to use new energy, including energies such as hydrogen or electricity, and also new materials such as composites and new production methods.

Rich Wahls continued: “I believe there will be a lot of change in the next 20 years.”

While China, Japan, South Korea and many European countries such as France, Germany and the UK are also aiming for breakthroughs in aircraft design, NASA thinks they are also trying to make the US the go-to country. head.

The new jet in NASA’s competition will face a challenge: Will customers dare to step on a plane with an unusual shape?

In fact, customer acceptance is also one of the criteria of the contest.

According to the Wall Street Journal