Would YOU Fly as a PASSENGER In This FLYING WING?

why is it that all modern airliners still look more or less the same why don't we see more modern streamlined shapes like flying wings that first appeared over 70 years ago is there a possibility that that might change soon stay tuned [Music] let's start with answering one of the most common assumptions about the lack of Civilian flying wings no the reason that we don't see them has nothing to do with the fact that they don't need to avoid radar but stealth is of course a part of the reason why we see military aircraft with those designs today when you hear about flying wings most people likely think of the Northrop B2 spirit and its successor the north of Grumman B21 Raider which was actually unveiled early in December this year 2022. well unveiled is a bit relative since nothrop and the U.S Air Force almost didn't show any detail to the Press just a front view of the aircraft and they kept both the engines and much of the wing hidden naturally though it's not that unusual for stealthy designs to remain somewhat secretive so I can kind of understand that but what about civilian airliners well before we look closer at flying wings and Blended Wing body aircraft let's have a look at how most airliners are laid out today of course there are some differences between aircraft but generally speaking conventional aircraft have distinct ports that include a fuselage a pair of wings and a tail section the tail section features a vertical stabilizer and a rotor plus a horizontal stabilizer and an elevator now designing an aircraft with a simple tubular fuselage has some great advantages one of those being that the manufacturers can build the fuselage in sections with the structure remaining more or less consistent along the way this greatly simplifies both manufacturing and the design which was particularly important way back when the computers weren't as Central to aircraft designers they maybe are today the tubular fuselage also allows aircraft makers to offer multiple versions of the same basic design by simply varying the aircraft length and having distinct fuselage and wing sections makes it much easier to build them separately usually at different manufacturing sites only to bring them together during the final assembly then when the aircraft is actually flying having a fairly consistent diameter in the cabin makes it easier for for example cabin Crews who can standardize the routine working with a fixed number of passengers on each row as they move down the cabin but most importantly in an emergency this standard design of the aircraft provides plenty of space for emergency exits that can be placed more or less evenly along the entire length of the fuselage in addition to these characteristics a lot of other routine jobs have evolved over time that now benefit from this layout for example having the engines in the cells either in the rear or preferably under the wings makes them accessible and easy to work on for ground Crews compared to designs where the engines are buried inside of the fuselage itself and finally it's probably worth remembering that a lot of airport infrastructure assume that Airlines big and small will have this kind of standard layout of their aircraft that so things like the size of gates the position and reach of jetways and air stairs as well as the design of nearly all airport vehicles are made to access aircraft of this shape to deliver luggage catering equipment than even fuel so then what actually are flying wings and what would be the benefit of using them instead of these more conventional designs and if they haven't been used by anyone before now why would there be any chance of them being used in the future by anyone well I'll tell you all about this after this short message from my sponsor I want to say a few words about today's sponsor nordvpn which is a long time supporter of this channel as you know when I'm not at home making these videos I work as a pilot flying around Europe 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browsing the internet freely and safely today thank you nordvpn now back to the video the first studies into the use of flying wings took place back in the 1920s which means that this kind of aircraft on this design actually had fans a decade or even two decades before anyone even knew what radar was the real motivation behind flying wings and later Blended Wing body designs was their potential aerodynamic efficiency the standard aircraft is signed up we know and use today is basically a compromise between practicality and ease of manufacturing on one side and efficiency on the other most parts of a fuselage today generate a lot of drag and they're doing that without generating any meaningful amount of lift and that includes the joint between the fuselage and the wing which also creates a lot of drag a design that is all or nearly all Wing would provide some clear benefits in these areas such a design should for example be lighter for the same amount of generated lift and this would make it more efficient bringing some serious Savings in fuel economy probably we'll get back to that in a minute but it was definitely the efficiency that drove the earliest Aviation enthusiasts to explore the potential and they did that despite some serious difficulties in the 1930s successful flying wings design were made both in Germany and in the United States but it was only in the 1940s when Jack Northrop started testing full-scale prototypes during and after the second world war with the Yankee Bravo 35 and later the Yankee Bravo 49 that their low radar signature was discovered but it looked a little bit closer at those serious difficulties that I mentioned earlier and why we don't see many of these aircraft today the main issue here is stability four conventional aircraft to remain stable in Pitch its center of gravity has to be slightly in front of the center of lift this means that the horizontal stabilizer has to work not by providing lift but by generating a downward Force Vector you can think of the aircraft as a seesaw with the center of gravity acting as the fulcrum or Pivot Point the enormous amount of lift that is generated from the wing acts just behind it to push the nose down and then the much smaller downforce from the stabilizer acts on a longer moment arm to counteract that pitch down the more distance there is between the center of gravity and the center of lift the more downward force is required from the horizontal stabilizer and the more stable the aircraft is this is what allows weight changes inside of the aircraft with for example fuel being used from the wings and passengers walking around inside but the problem here is that efficiency and stability are fighting each other an aircraft that needs to generate a lot of downward force from its horizontal stabilizer will generate more drag and therefore be less efficient but an aircraft that uses a flying wing design doesn't have a stabilizer so it has to stabilize itself in different ways this is why it took until the 1930s and 1940s for Pure flying wing designs to become stable they require the development of swept Wings to do that now to be stable in your conventional aircraft rely on their vertical stabilizer and rather to achieve that and some flying wings do have Rudders but others including most of the stealthy ones use other tricks like split ailerons or spoilers to keep the aircraft in coordinated flight so stability is the first hurdle in creating a flying wing that could work as a commercial aircraft Aviation authorities around the world have some strict criteria in necessary stability and controllability that a pure flying wing design might struggle to comply with and even if it did it would likely have very strict operational limitations on how much its center of gravity could vary military flying wings like the B2 Spirit are aerodynamically unstable with quadruple redundant fly-by-wire systems required just to keep it in the air of course many normal civilian airliners also use fly-by-wire systems but they are aerodynamically stable using computers just to make sure that the aircraft doesn't go into a spin is a completely different ball game now I did say before that flying wings are probably more efficient than conventional aircraft and that's because there are some practical issues with these designs regarding their size and the thickness of the wing a wing that is really thick might be efficient at low speed but it would likely need a very slow Cruise speed to remain efficient early single seat flying wing designs had so little vertical space internally that the pilots had to lay down on their stomach to fly it and that was to reduce the thickness of the wing realistically for aircraft to be large enough to have good internal space and for the wings to be thin enough to work at high speeds we need to look at Blended Wing body designs instead of pure flying wings so what is a blended Wing body done well as the name suggests it's somewhere between a flying wing and a delta wing like the Concord for example unlike the Flying Wing which well is a flying wing the Blended Wing body has a section that you can definitely identify as the fuselage although the fuselage section may still generate a good amount of lift this views a large Blends gradually with the wing which can be then much thinner most Blended Wing body designs incorporate vertical stabilizers and Rudders sometimes set at an angle to offer some stability in Pitch as well the Blended Wing body designs shares many of the advantages of the flying wing while being easier to keep aerodynamically stable but this new layout has its own problems first of all Blended Wing bodies are much more complicated to design modern computers can obviously help with that but creating a blended Wing body that has three or four different variations like the 77 or the Airbus 320 families wouldn't be just a matter of adding or removing a couple of fuselage sections it would be much more complicated this would be a headache for the designers obviously but it could also be for the airlines because a lack of part commonality complicates how they could stock spares for their aircraft and then comes the issue with the airports these designs would mean possibly having to make some huge changes in how gates are used in existing airports taxaways and other infrastructure that has been designed around current airliners would likely also need to be re-examined and possibly rebuilt on all of this is because Blended Wing bodies are likely to be much wider than current aircraft are now both Bowie and Airbus are working on projects that will use folding wings and this could solve much of the width problem but the folding Wing mechanism brings a weight penalty which eats into the efficiency of these aircraft plus our folding Wing doesn't address things like the design of airport vehicles for example we don't know where passengers luggage would be in this act of designs would it be below the passenger deck like it is today or would it be at the same level as the cabin somewhere in the wing and what if Boeing decides to put it in one place but Airbus does something completely different these are obviously relatively small problems that could be solved by setting a common standard but there are other much more serious problems than these many Blended Wing Body Concepts have little space for emergency exits some have doors only in the front maybe with some smaller exits or hatches further back the number and size of doors in an airliner are subject to very strict rules for evacuation purposes and obviously it would not be acceptable for exits to exist only on one side of the aircraft some designers of Blended Wing body concept claim to have solutions for these problems but they will have to convince the authorities that their designs would work in all types of emergencies including in situations like belly Landings for example and then what about Windows for many passengers being away from a window is bad enough if you're in the middle of a 747 or a triple seven cabin with 10 seats in every row but some of these Blended Wing bodies have much more seats than that in a row plus there might be a thick wing on either side with no windows for several rows designers overlooking into tricks like projection screens to replace windows and keep passengers happy but since you guys are regular viewers of my channels you know that there is a safety aspect to having Windows as well which is why cabin crew asks you to keep your window blinds open for a takeover Landing you the passengers you need to be aware of the plane's surroundings as much as possible in case of an evacuation and rescue crews needs to be able to see into the aircraft as well for the very same reason projection screens or other augmented reality tricks really doesn't solve these problems especially not at both ends also having a passenger cabin with many rows and Columns of seats would make the position of the passengers really important especially when you're standing or when you're moving around in conventional aircraft all passengers are relatively close to the roll axis when the aircraft Banks but that might not be the case in a flying wing and that could cause some serious nausea issues now it might be easier to get around a lot of these problems in smaller Regional aircraft that use a blended Wing body design private jets are another possibility with even fewer people on simpler evacuation and center of gravity problems but we then have to get to the next issue which is pressurization a great thing with the design of current airliners is that the tubular fuselage is easy to pressurize at high altitudes the forces acting on the fuselage are easy to predict with more design effort being necessary only at either end at the front and the rear pressure bulkheads there is a reason why fire extinguishers and other pressurized vessels are tubular but designing a safe pressurized irregular shape like that of a blended Wing body cabin or a flying wing cabin for that matter would be really difficult remember a flying wing is supposed to be lighter than a regular fusel ocean Wing which is part of how it gets that extra efficiency but this won't necessarily be the case if these planes need thicker heavier walls to keep the pressurization safe military flying wings like the B2 only had a tiny pressurized cabin for the two pilots passenger aircraft with a large pressurized cabin is a completely different matter but there might be some good news here because Composites along with even more powerful computers could actually make designing and building these type of aircraft a bit easier in the near future there are already companies working on this Bombardier for example working on a blended Wing body business yet and Airbus has given us a couple of versions of a blended Wing body concept as part of the Acero e hydrogen designs finally it might actually be worth keeping an eye on some military Concepts as well Lockheed Martin and other designers are working on something called a hybrid Wing body design this is another take on the Blended Wing body but with a more conventional rear fuselage with t-tail they are designing this concept as a freighter with a rear ramp similar to what many current military Freighters are using aviation has given us many examples of where advances first appeared on military aircraft only to them later move into the civilian life but of course military designs don't have to worry much about offering window seats nor do they need to think about existing airport infrastructure but if such designs actually would enter service it wouldn't be Unthinkable for them to eventually evolve into something that you and I could fly in but then the question is with all of these compromises compared to a pure flying wing or these Blended or hybrid Wing body designs enough of an improvement over what we already have the U.S Air Force wants lockheed's future airlift to burn 70 less fuel than its current C5 Galaxy now that might sound impressive but the C5 is a 1960s design with four really old dungeons Boeing Airbus and others are already working on other advanced concepts using very high aspect radio wings this is by the way why they are both working on folding Wings right now beyond what Boeing is already doing with the triple 7x advances in Composite Materials plus new ways to manufacture aircraft parts from those type of materials economically means that we could well see some unusual looking airliners in the near future but this doesn't mean that they will be Blended Wing bodies in fact I actually doubt that they will be now check out this video next which I think you're going to find really interesting or binge on this playlist if you like what you've seen then please subscribe to the channel and consider supporting me and my team by joining my awesome patreon crew or buy yourself some merch have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 204,900

Keywords: aviation industry, Bombardier, Airbus, Airbus A220, Bombardier C series, Boeing mess, Breaking Aviation news, Boeing 797, How Airbus beat Boeing, Aviation explained, Mentour Pilot, Mentour Crashes, Fear of flying, nervous flyer, nervous flyer help, How to become a pilot, pilot life, life of a pilot, Boeing 767, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Airbus A321XLR, Airbus A320NEO, Boeing 737MAX, Certification, c-series, A220, flying wing, future

Id: 1EpPdI7Tyb8

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023