[
](/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/04/phantom.jpg)Boeing and NASA continue to push ahead with testing of their X-48B blended wing body (BWB) research aircraft, a design Boeing engineers say is about 30-percent more fuel efficient than a similarly sized conventional aircraft carrying an equivalent payload.
"We want to fully understand the aerodynamics of the blended wing body design all the way up to and beyond stall, so that we can learn how to fly a blended wing body aircraft as safely as any other large transport aircraft with a conventional tail," say Norm Princen, the X-48B chief engineer.
The X-48B is a collaboration between Boeing's Phantom Works unit, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). They're developing the plane to investigate the potential of a blended wing body design, which uses a triangular-shaped wing fused to the fuselage, rather than the tube-wing-tail design of traditional aircraft.
They've scheduled a total of eight flights for what they are referring to as the Block 2 phase. In Block 2, a 500-pound, remotely piloted test vehicle will fly at up to 125 miles per hour without its slats deployed. Slats are flight control surfaces on wings' leading edges allow an aircraft to take off, fly, and land at lower speeds when extended.
Industry experts believe a blended wing body military aircraft could be in service within 10 to 15 years, depending on funding and the speed of testing.
Photo by NASA.
