Cranfield To Lead European Blended Wing Body Testbed Design

Cranfield University, the UK’s premier academic aerospace research hub, is leading the design of multiple scaled blended wing body (BWB) flying testbeds as part of a €16 million ($17.3 million) project led by the Netherlands national aerospace laboratory, NLR.

Under the Exaelia (Experimental Aircraft for European Leadership in Aviation), 23 partners in 13 countries are collaborating to develop a series of small-scale flying testbeds to test new concepts and technologies targeting sustainable long-range aircraft.

The project is focused on three main areas, a tube-and-wing aircraft with high aspect ratio wings, BWBs and advanced propulsion systems, particularly hydrogen propulsion. As well as leading the design of the BWB testbeds, Cranfield is also developing the flight test practices for all the testbeds, as well as making a major contribution to the design of hydrogen powertrains.

Cranfield is already involved with BWB research having recently built a full-scale blended wing fuselage mock-up in conjunction with the UK’s University of Greenwich, for use in a series of passenger evacuation trials. In the early 2000s, Cranfield Aerospace—a division of the University—also built two X-48B experimental BWB aircraft for Boeing which were tested with NASA at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. Measuring 21-ft. in span, the X-48B was an 8.5% scaled version of a conceptual 240 ft. span design.

The Exaelia project partners are also supported by an industry advisory group including Airbus, Safran, Rolls-Royce, MTU, GKN Aerospace, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, Piaggio Aerospace, KLM Royal Dutch Airline, and ITP Aero.