Twin-fuselage configuration for improving fuel efficiency of passenger aircraft
Yiyuan Ma, Ali Elham
Abstract
The requirements of increasing air traffic volume while enhancing its sustainability for the next generation of air transportation demand a step change in aircraft performance, for which the development and technology escalation of ultra-high aspect ratio wings configurations is one key enabling strategy. However, compared with conventional aircraft, the ultra-high aspect ratio wings structure bears higher loads, which poses challenges to aircraft configuration design and related technologies. This paper describes the twin-fuselage (TF) concept as one of the promising configurations adopting ultra-high aspect ratio wings. A methodology of conceptual design and analysis framework for TF transport aircraft is developed by improving and integrating several methods and tools. A medium-range TF transport aircraft is designed, and a sensitivity analysis is carried out to explore the design space, and multidisciplinary design optimization is used to optimize the configuration of the TF transport aircraft. The results show a significant advantage of TF configuration over the conventional cantilever configuration, which presents reductions of 29.33% and 33.60% in the fuel consumption and maximum takeoff weight, respectively.