China’s giant flying wing could carry over 800 passengers

A Chinese research team has unveiled an aerodynamic model for a massive flying-wing passenger aircraft that could carry more than 800 people, marking a bold new entry in the country’s large aircraft program, South China Morning Post reports.

Unlike conventional aircraft that have separate fuselage, wings and tail, a flying wing merges most of the structure into a single broad lifting body.

The proposed design is 85 metres (280 feet) wide and 43 metres long, with a wingspan roughly 1.6 times that of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which also uses a flying-wing layout. By comparison, the Airbus A380, currently the world’s largest passenger jet, typically seats about 555 passengers.

The concept comes from the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre (CARDC), a national institute that has contributed to major aircraft projects including the C919 narrowbody airliner and the Y-20 transport plane.

China is also pressing ahead with the C929, a 280-seat long-range widebody jet expected to make its first flight around 2030, and the C949 supersonic airliner, which draws parallels with Nasa’s X-59 supersonic technology.

The flying-wing passenger aircraft, which does not yet have a public name, is described as a pioneering project that explores even more radical configurations.

Details were published in June in the Chinese-language Journal of Aerospace Power, where the design serves as a standard model for verifying wind tunnels, computational methods and testing equipment for long, slender flying-wing shapes.

“The high-aspect-ratio flying wing represents an aircraft configuration with remarkable aerodynamic advantages,” wrote aerodynamics scientist Li Yonghong and his team. “Its high lift-to-drag ratio and low induced drag could deliver longer range and lower energy consumption.”

While the B-2 bomber uses a flying-wing layout for stealth in military missions, the Chinese concept is aimed squarely at large-scale civil aviation.

The researchers originally developed the layout for a 250-seat aircraft similar in capacity to long-range widebody jets such as the Airbus A330 and Boeing 767, but have since scaled it up to the 800-passenger class as part of a broader push for large twin-aisle widebody airliners that began during China’s 13th five-year plan covering 2016-2020.

The final design features a reference wing area of about 1,395 square metres (15,015 sq ft), a 37-degree leading-edge sweep and a 28-degree trailing-edge sweep, with a cruise speed of Mach 0.8.

Although a full-scale aircraft has not been built, the team is advancing prototype testing using a 1:52 stainless steel scale model.

The model measures about 0.8 metres in length with a wingspan of 1.6 metres, and has been put through tests in CARDC’s 2.4-metre transonic wind tunnel at speeds between Mach 0.4 and 0.8.

Researchers examined aerodynamic characteristics, boundary-layer transition, measurement accuracy, lateral and longitudinal stability, and structural deformation.

“The results confirm its excellent aerodynamic performance, qualifying it as a benchmark model for such configurations,” the team wrote.

The model achieved a maximum lift-to-drag ratio of about 20 at speeds below Mach 0.7, dropping to 17.6 at Mach 0.8.

The researchers added that the model “could support studies of flow mechanisms and aeroelasticity, as well as the development of new wind tunnel testing techniques”.

By Vafa Guliyeva