Research on design of stability and control of a 250-seat tailless blended-wing-body civil transport aircraft

While facing challenges in terms of stability and control due to the lack of conventional tails, the blended-wing-body (BWB) flying wing aircraft configuration is one of the hot baselines for next generation transport airplanes. On the basis of a 250-seat BWB experimental configuration, the control surfaces are configured according to trim, stability augmentation and maneuverability considerations with margins for disturbances. Requirements from airworthiness regulations and flying qualities are set as design goals and incorporated into the eigenstructure assignment method to find stability augmentation solutions. Special consideration is placed on the forward path to provide the desired response type. A roll attitude protection system is designed to improve the flight safety. The results show that the stability and control are sufficient, that the flying qualities are satisfactory after stability augmentation, and that the roll attitude protection system works as expected.