Boeing, NASA Testing Futuristic Blended Wing Body Plane Again

By Tactical-Life

Boeing is back in the wind tunnel testing one of its most innovative and potentially game-changing advanced concepts: the Blended Wing Body.Testing is underway through the end of September at the NASA Langley Research Center 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel in Virginia. Boeing and NASA researchers are using a 6 percent scale, 13-foot-wingspan Blended Wing Body (BWB) model to validate testing methodology, as well as map airflow over the airplane using lasers and smoke with a technique known as particle imagery velocimetry (PIV).

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Time permitting, testing will be conducted to measure the effectiveness of various control surfaces. That data will be compared with and supplement the set of data collected over the last two years on the same model at NASA Langley and the much larger 40- by 80-foot subsonic tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center in California.

“Testing the same model in two very different tunnels gives us data to make our test methods better,” said Dan Vicroy, principal investigator at NASA Langley. “Plus these tests will let us do PIV – something we didn’t do before.”

“Our tests are a continuation of more than two decades of successful research and development …Read the Rest

Source:: Tactical Life