Advanced configurations for very large transport airplanes

Recent aerospace industry interest in developing subsonic commercial transport airplanes with at least 50% greater passenger capacity than the largest existing aircraft in this category (e.g. the Boeing 747-400 with approximately 400–450 seats) has generated a number of proposals based primarily on the configuration paradigm established 50 years ago with the Boeing B-47 bomber. While this classic configuration has come to dominate subsonic commercial airplane development since the advent of the Boeing 707/Douglas DC-8 in the mid-1950s, its extrapolation to the size required to carry more than 600–700 passengers raises a number of questions, including:

• 1.

  How large can an airplane of 707/747 configuration be built and still remain economically and operationally viable?

• 2.

  What configuration alternatives might allow circumvention of practical size limitations inherent in the basic 707/747 configuration?

• 3.

  What new and/or dormant technology elements might be brought together in synergistic ways to resolve or ameliorate very large subsonic airplane problems?

To explore these and a number of related issues, a team of Boeing, university and NASA engineers was formed under the auspices of the NASA Advanced Concepts Program during 1994. The results of a Research Analysis contract (NAS1-20269) focused on a large, unconventional (C-wing) transport configuration for which Boeing and the authors were granted a design patent in 1995 is the subject of this paper which is based on information contained in McMasters et al. (NASA CR 198351, October 1996).