Airbus MAVERIC, blended wing body aircraft demonstrator
 

Airbus has revealed MAVERIC (Model Aircraft for Validation and Experimentation of Robust Innovative Controls) its “blended wing body” scale model technological demonstrator.

Below Video from Airbus:

You Tube

Airbus article:

https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/stor...-aircraft.html

Well, from my passenger point of view, it seem to have either no window seats at all, or a very reduced proportion of window seats.

Chances are, by the time something like this goes into production, windows will be 'virtual' anyway.

Why need a window, can't see anything at night or in cloud, and some airlines demand you pull the blinds at night. A good video would provide all you need on your IFE. Spent many an hour as pax without a window, C-97, C-121, C-130, Caribou. Folks are too busy watching the movie to be bothered whats out the window. Remember flying LAX to NY daytime and was ordered to close the blind so they could show some B grade Hollywood tripe movie, and the Grand Canyon was on display below on a beautiful clear blue sky day. Having traveled half way round the world what do you think my viewing preference was? The consensus was the movie.

Wild Guess:
That aircraft is as likely to be unmanned as not.

I'm mildly claustrophobic, and a window seat helps to ease the remains of my mind (I'm 75). I don't NEED a window seat, but I really enjoy the view when it's available. I think most pilots prefer a window seat, but maybe that's just me.

Cheers,
Grog

Second that. I got to be able to see out. Why else put so much effort into getting to row 0?

Wouldn’t want to be sitting or standing far off the centreline if it starts rolling, either in turbulence or a turn......

not a problem , by the time this aircraft will be carrying passengers they would have invented an anti-G system ..

Every row should have a view, including the single pilot. The 'windows' will use LCD screens replicating, or bettering conventional views, sourced by appropriate cameras.

Elimination of the windows provides significant structural and weight benefit, particularly for the flight deck by not having to contour the structure to give a clear view, or 'beef-up' the curves for pressurisation.
Many manufacturers future programmes evaluated the these changes in the late 1990s; the stopper was the availability or reliability of the vision electronics. Nowadays the technology exists, both for vision and single pilot operation.

As for roll issues, the roll control should not generate any uncomfortable movement more than could be experienced in light turbulence today. An advantage of adaptive control is the ability to schedule roll acceleration, and that the vertical motion due to roll does not reverse suddenly - sensed 'g', as with turbulence.

Windows (or lack thereof) is not the challenge with this type of aircraft, it's providing emergency exits in the central part of the cabin. Will be interesting to see what they propose in this respect.

No Window, no Pilot
 

The discussions about the reason(s) for having a pilot(s) come down to having someone up front who can, as some of our contributors like to shout, FLY the PLANE - and this with the most basic tools, having deselected or lost anything automatic.
Well, since the days of the open cockpit, the most basic tool available to the pilot has been his windscreen. Statisticians will now come and calculate how likely an electrical failure causing artificial screen failure will be.
Concorde was initially conceived with a blind cockpit in cruise (droop nose raised) due to the perceived difficulty in making and financing a transparency which would take the thermal and dynamic loading.
Even Davies thought blind flight could work in the high speed, high level environment. Philosophers and pilots amongst the community got their supersonic/ chicken-proof glass window, however - not least for safety considerations.
As for passenger windows - while it is truly annoying that many punters prefer the movie to the view - I’m guessing that the pilotless aircraft will be a passenger less aircraft anyway.

Wonder about the emergency exits for this configuration.. If one side is out, the 90 second specification may be challenging.

Yes, this is a small scale control demonstrator produced by a french team. Interestingly, within Airbus there's been a German test UAS, a British test UAS (Albatross) and now this French UAS. Maveric looks really good.

Roll motion at the outside seats won't be an issue in the scenario Maveric is looking at.

I think the roll issue is exaggerated,
What's maximum AOB that most airline SOPs allow - 30 degrees?
How far out from the centreline is the farthest seat?
Are they going to be cranking the thing `round the sky like a fast jet - not likely.
More likely than not - these aircraft will be flying benign routings and joining on long finals.
I wonder how much more efficient they could make it by getting rid of the tails and integrating the engines into the airframe?

They seem great until it comes time to pressurize them.

Or to evacuate from them.

Quote:

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Nowadays the technology exists, both for vision and single pilot operation.

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I do love this old chestnut.
Trains must be the easiest form of transport to automate but what percentage of the worlds trains are driverless?
Cargo ships must come a close second on the high seas, they are brought into port by a pilot crew anyway.
So back to aircraft, if a pilot is required then one assumes we need a spare as a back up, seems reasonable.
We will lose some cabin crew before we lose one of the pilots, no doubt about that.

Aren't engines integrated into the structure a maintenance nightmare, hence hanging them under the wings?

The maveric design isn't optimal for all user groups and there are good reasons for that. There's much more conversation on the intranet, which I don't see in the public domain so I can't comment on.

Suffice it to say, it all depends. Depending on the size of aircraft you're looking at, it could be perfectly fine to put the engines at the back (but the vstabs do need to move...).

Didn't Boeing propose something along similar lines some years back?

And I thought the A380 was phugly...

I wouldnt mine no window, if there was a forward looking cockpit window cam hooked up to the inseat screen that was active the whole flight including ground movements and take off/landing.

Yes... the X-48B

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/...48B/index.html

Cranfield built the X-48, who built MAVERIC ? Similar sized models.

Differences in external design form; why … ? for consideration and discussion.

This is a serious question, from someone who knows they don't know: how much information is gained from building an RC model of such small size, over what can be gained from wind tunnel tests and computation?

Maybe it's just me, but it reminds me of Thunderbird 2. :-)

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1035d620a.jpeg

Consider the possibility of making the skin of the aircraft invisible to passengers, using either internal screens, or glasses hooked up to a multitude of external cameras. The glasses might be a better idea, considering that some passengers will prefer a nice, dark and non-threatening environment.

Never mind the lack of windows, I cannot see where the underbelly cargo and pax bags are going to be loaded and unloaded. There also seems to be limited opportunity to have more than one door for passenger embarkation and disembarkation.

No problem!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a349e226a.jpeg

Like your thinking Capn P.
If you could have separate pre-fuellable/loadable pods for consumables and payload it could make turnarounds quick. And an inflight jettison switch for the pax pod (with a parachute of course, we're not monsters) - behave or else.......bwahahahahaaaa.

Wow!!! That baby could go 6,200 mph and was powered by a fusion reactor!

If aviation is going to pull its weight in terms of reducing carbon emissions (or keeping them the same with growth in traffic) then these are types of aircraft designs that will be required. And its not just the aircraft shape/form, it also allows new engine architectures such as open-rotor designs to be used. Only by combining all these aspects together will you get step changes in efficiency.

What you airline chaps need is a system pioneered in the helicopter world, in line with Cpt. P's suggestion. detatchable, so it could double as the lounge at the gate and rolled out already loaded to the aircraft, economy introduced as well by getting rid of the bus transit from lounge to aircraft at those airports that use that system.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ebbef1c02e.jpg

Already proposed some years ago....

Can't post links so look up v=ZPkr3A9DTOc in youtube.

Looking on this picture I wonder why Airbus have decided to make an observation deck looking like a cockpit from outside? First class or observation deck will be totally fine with LCD screens imitating the front view, no need for extra structural items and expensive front windows...

I understood it was a "control demonstrator", that means that the goal is to demonstrate that this shape of plane can be controlled in flight, can take-of and land safely and such. Wind tunnel tests are too static for that and a full dynamic simulation requires huge amounts of cpu-time.

Airbus PR
 

Indeed, NASA were doing this over ten years ago! I was very amused at how much publicity this has received everywhere. Airbus' PR division sure knows how to create viral fluff (another example being their electric demonstrator aircraft, receiving much fanfare when other manufacturers such as Pipistrel were already producing useful electrics). As for the blended wing design, it has many flaws as a passenger transport concept, as mentioned by others. To me, a more interesting concept from the same NASA/Boeing research stable is the D8, Mark Drela's twin-aisle double-bubble design, but it also suffers from too shallow a cargo hold. High tail-mounted engines are not new, if you recall the DC-10/MD-11, but the airflow problems may not yet have been resolved. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck with the general layout pioneered by the Dash-80/KC-135/B707, which is aesthetically boring but no doubt economical for the airlines.

Wasn’t this very layout pioneered by the Me 262 already?

Yes, but in the Me 262, every seat was a window seat.

He means the -262 was the first of what became the conventional layout that we fly today. The -163 was most like the Maveric, and yes, every seat was a window seat.