So what is this title referring to? To dig it, let’s recall and visualise a passenger plane. Take a slice of your seconds and really see what kind of design can you see? A long tube like shape with long two wings sticking out from the centre, with engines attached to each sides of the wings, a tail and short wing on each side of the tail or tail wing?
Isn’t it so? Yes, this is how all passenger plane shares the common design format. The colour and some shape and placement may differ slightly but in the end, they all share the common design format.
Tube-and-wing design
This common design that we are talking about, it has a name. This design is most commonly called ‘Tube-and-wing’ design. This design came to existence from the Boeing B47 stratojet. This was used by the early US military force. Later, Boeing stretched out this design to their passenger planes as well and since then it has become the norm to have as a design for the typical passenger planes we know now. This design stood rigid against the odds of time due to its effective design that keeps the plane stable in the air.
Yet, the major downside of this design is, this design consume fuel like a monster. Since no other design was proved to overthrow this design, this approach since then has been the only perfect onethat proved its worthiness.
The advent of Blended Wing Body
Lot of experiment had been then carried out and failed none of them could replace tube-and-body format. It was until this new design that may well overthrow the long dictatorial design of the tube-and-body, called a Blended Wing Body (BWB). This design is also referred to as Hybrid Wing Body (HWB). This design not only looks like some sort of mini spaceship but also possess some serious optimized performance and technical issue.
Blend Wing Body design is still on an experimental stage and may well take some time until you and I get to fly in one of this flying saucer. Yes, this kind of look resembles a flying saucer. With all other design being failed to dethrone tube-and-wing, this design is the only hope that may change the way we conceive the typical technological format of a passenger plane. This design is carried out by a prototype that is flying around in the air by Boeing.