A completely different aircraft design was proposed.
Jeffrey Spedding from the University of Southern California (USA) and Joachim Heussen from Northwestern University of South Africa have long wanted to develop a more aerodynamic design, abandoning the "tube with wings", but still have no experimental data. Now there are those.
They built a simple "three-motion" modular aircraft. We started with a configuration in which the entire aircraft is a flat wing. Then, to minimize resistance, the fuselage was added, after which a small tail, which, in effect, “cancels” the aerodynamic disturbance created by the fuselage.
Scientists analyzed the air flow and the various relative angles of the wings, fuselage and tail to reduce resistance (less fuel consumption) and increase lift (so that the option was win-win).
The results are as follows. The flying wing provides ideal (but impractical - the load cannot be taken) basic indicators. The presence of the fuselage allows you to take on payload, but immediately reduces the lifting force and increases resistance. The correct type of tail, however, can restore lift and reduce drag — sometimes to the level of a flying wing.
You will laugh, but in the end the engineers turned out ... a bird: twisted wings, a "bellied" fuselage, a tiny tail. A few years ago, a glider with such a tail was successfully tested, on a mono-wing (albeit a jet), the Swiss Yves Rossi fearlessly cuts through, but it has not yet come to large and commercial prototypes. And in vain, scientists emphasize, because the current design of aircraft, in their opinion, is fundamentally ineffective
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