Blended-Wing-Body Aircraft Design Framework for Vibroacoustic Modeling of Interior Cabin Noise

As the aviation industry seeks to reduce its environmental footprint while maintaining the growing demand for global connectivity, sustainable innovations are critical to the future of air travel. The blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft offers significant potential, providing improved aerodynamic behavior, opportunities for hydrogen fuel integration, and reductions in emissions and noise pollution. This configuration's unique design introduces new challenges in managing interior cabin noise and structural vibrations. This work outlines the development of a multidisciplinary design framework for BWB aircraft that integrates a vibroacoustic modeling methodology to characterize the coupled relationship between interior cabin noise, varying panel thickness and material selection, and overall aircraft design. Two vehicle classes carrying 162 and 365 passengers, defined as the BWB-162 and BWB-365, are analyzed to demonstrate the framework’s capabilities. Results show that the thickest panel configuration achieves a 14.1% reduction in A-weighted overall sound pressure level for the BWB-162 and a 14.7% reduction for the BWB-365 compared to the thinnest configuration, highlighting the trade-off between noise reduction and fuel efficiency. The thickest panels yielded maximum A-weighted overall sound pressure levels of 102.13 dBA for the BWB-162 and 101.67 dBA for the BWB-365 at the aftmost cabin location. The proposed framework enables a comprehensive evaluation of design trade-offs between acoustic performance and fuel efficiency, supporting the advancement of quieter, more sustainable BWB aircraft.