01.2 - Aircraft Design and Integrated Systems (Use cases and Applications)
INVESTIGATING A STABLE LIFTING FUSELAGE FOR A TWO SEAT SAILPLANE OF THE GULL WING CONFIGURATION
B.-B. Huyssen¹, D. Fenthum¹, J. Huyssen, CSIR, South Africa; ¹University of Pretoria, South Africa
At the ICAS 2024 conference in Italy, we introduced the notion of a single family of ideal aircraft configurations. Central to this notion is the hypothesis that there should be only one dominant configuration (DC) in the domain of heavier-than-air, subsonic flight. Explorers of alternatives to the current dominant configuration (CDC) assume that better solutions may exist. To qualify as the proposed ideal configuration, the superior alternative should be suitable for the majority of flight objectives, as is the CDC. As such, it must be suitable for the airliner but also for quite different applications like the sailplane. At the same conference, it was announced that a demonstrator, sized for a 250-seat airliner, will soon fly to show the superior flight efficiency of the blended wing body configuration. If the BWB configuration is a candidate for the proposed ideal configuration, it should become the DC to replace the CDC. Then, the sailplane of the future would be configured as a BWB. We proposed the natural dominant configuration (NDC) as a candidate for the family of ideal configurations and predict that the best sailplane will be based on this DC. Here we describe a computational fluid dynamics workflow using ANSYS Discovery and Fluent for a parametric exploration of the design features of the fuselage for a sailplane of the NDC. This is used to test whether the NDC body can contribute to the aircraft lift and stability as required in an ideal configuration, or if a BWB should be considered.
DOI: 10.71945/icas2026_0931