Blended Wing Body Configuration for Hydrogen-Powered Aviation

Abstract

Hydrogen aircraft have the potential to achieve more significant climate impact reductions at a lower cost than aircraft powered by biofuels or other drop-in sustainable aviation fuels. Nevertheless, even as a liquid, hydrogen requires four times more volume than kerosene to store the same energy. Companies and researchers have suggested that the blended wing body configuration is well-suited to hydrogen because it can efficiently store large fuel tanks. However, nobody has quantified this claim, at least publicly. We address this gap by comparing optimized kerosene and hydrogen versions of blended wing body and tube and wing aircraft. Our models predict that, with ambitious hydrogen tank technology assumptions, a hydrogen blended wing body has a 3.8% energy penalty compared to a kerosene blended wing body. In contrast, the energy penalty for a tube and wing is 5.1%. These results suggest that the blended wing body configuration is slightly better suited to hydrogen than a tube and wing. However, the conclusion breaks down under less optimistic scenarios where lightweight conformal liquid hydrogen tanks are unavailable. Nonetheless, the energy penalties of switching the two configurations to hydrogen have a similar order of magnitude. Any kerosene blended wing body fuel burn benefit over a tube and wing also applies to hydrogen versions. As a result, kerosene blended wing body technology developments, such as maturing the structural design of the noncircular pressurized passenger cabin, remain valuable for future hydrogen-powered aircraft.