Effects of wing twist on lift and drag characteristics of blended wing body aircraft

Abstract

Blended Wing Body is a revolutionary concept offering phenomenal performance advantages over conventional aircraft. There are various aerodynamic features that are added to the wing in order to adjust the lift distribution and wing twist is one of them. This paper presents a progressive study to examine the effects of twist angles on the aerodynamic characteristics of a Blended Wing Body (BWB) aircraft. CFD analysis is carried out on seven BWB models having wing twists ranging from +3o to -3o. Each model is analyzed at four different Mach numbers. The coefficient of drag (Cd) and coefficient of lift (Cl) is determined and plotted against the twist angle to obtain a trend. The Cl/Cd ratio is also calculated to observe the overall aerodynamic performance of the BWB.