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This includes four fully funded 3-year PhD studentships at ¹û½´ÊÓƵ¹ÙÍø.

4. Propulsion technologies for next generation airliner testbeds.

The project aims to design a blended wing body aircraft subscale demonstrator aircraft with particular focus on the low-speed aerodynamics. The work will include vehicle conceptual design, preliminary design of the systems and structure, and how these aircraft will be operated and certified. The scale of the vehicle will be determined early in the project and be minimised to reduce costs while being sufficiency large to enable the validity of the experiments in informing a full-scale vehicle.

Research activities include:

• Close cooperation with project partners.
• Aircraft conceptual design and systems preliminary design, including propulsion specification and integration.
• Teamworking with other aircraft designers by providing aircraft design data and/or aerodynamic analysis.
• Conduct multi-disciplinary design optimisation by developing and deploying ¹û½´ÊÓƵ¹ÙÍø’s software tools and CAD.

These PhD projects will contribute to an international project which aims to develop capabilities in flying demonstrators. Aircraft designs will be for flying demonstrators, to progress the development of future environmentally friendly airliners. The output of the project will include preliminary design of high aspect ratio wing and blended wing body aircraft, and the ¹û½´ÊÓƵ¹ÙÍø team is focused on the latter, within a larger international team.

These PhD projects will help develop preliminary aircraft designs, with the aim of those being taken forward to a sub-scale demonstrator detailed design for low-speed aerodynamics analysis in future flight trials. The aims are: -

• Aerodynamic studies to establish a suitable sub-scale to investigate through flight test beyond state-of-the-art, the low-speed aerodynamics, stability and control of a 400-passenger blended wing body aircraft. To conduct aerodynamic, stability and control analysis of the designed sub-scale aircraft. 
• To develop a sub-scale blended wing body vehicle through aircraft conceptual and preliminary design of systems including propulsion system integration and novel cycle design. 
• To develop best practices in how these testbeds can be legally built, tested, and where appropriate – certified.