Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The term lifting body aircraft has become synonymous with flying wing aircraft, however the term broadly applies to vehicles where lift pressures are generated directly on the fuselage. A new design generates these lift pressures using a vertical duct through the fuselage aligned with a horizontal-flow blower below the duct to generate lift pressures on the vehicle’s lower surface. This lifting-body design emerges as useful in view of lost work analyses with findings that lost work from a fixed-wing airplanes’ jet-, prop-, and down- wash are typically prominent, and the lack of activity to mitigate the “wash” losses suggests the magnitudes of these losses have been underestimated. The use of wing flaps to increase altitude approximately doubles the respective lost work versus vertical takeoff methods since the resulting lost work appears as both jetwash and downwash. Advanced pressure contour engineering can mitigate the wash losses and aerodynamic resistances, which when combined with battery power, can reduce energy intensity of aircraft by >90%. Approaches to mitigating the lost work teach toward aircraft with lifting and thrusting body designs with minimal wingspans. Proof-of-concept computational fluid dynamic studies substantiate the pressure contour engineering approaches. This paper details: a) the base-case lifting body design, b) the computational fluid dynamics verification, c) the fundamental principles which create lift and improved efficiency, and d) a lost work analysis for airplane transit with closure of the energy balance.
Authors: Galen Suppes, Adam Suppes
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225640973