Study of belly-flaps to enhance lift and pitching moment coefficient of a Blended-Wing-Body airplane in landing and takeoff configuration

During the first century of flight few major changes have been made to the configuration of subsonic airplanes. A distinct fuselage with wings, a tail, engines and a landing gear persists as the dominant arrangement. During WWII some companies developed tailless all-wing airplanes. However the concept failed to advance till the late 80's when the B-2, the only flying wing to enter production to date, illustrated its benefits at least for a stealth platform. The advent of the Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) addresses the historical shortcomings of all-wing designs, specifically poor volume utility and excess wetted area as a result. The BWB is now poised to become the new standard for large subsonic airplanes. Major aerospace companies are studying the concept for next generation of passenger airplanes. But there are still challenges. One is the BWB's short control lever-arm pitch. This affects rotation and go-around performances. This study presents a possible solution by using a novel type of control surface, a belly-flap, on the under side of the wing to enhance its lift and pitching moment coefficient during landing, go-around and takeoff. Increases of up to 30% in lift-off CL and 8% in positive pitching moment have been achieved during wind tunnel tests on a generic BWB-model with a belly-flap. These aerodynamic improvements when used in a mathematical simulation of landing, go-around and takeoff procedure were showing reduction in landing-field-length by up to 22%, in takeoff-field-length by up to 8% and in loss in altitude between initiation of rotation and actual rotation during go-around by up to 21.5%.