Estimating the structural weight of a Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) aircraft during conceptual design has proven to be a significant challenge due to its unconventional configuration. Many of the tools and methods typically employed for this task are inadequate since they are derived from historical data generated by decades of tube-and-wing style construction. Therefore, a physics-based multidisciplinary analysis and weight optimization environment was developed for the purpose of structural weight estimation of the HWB using a parameterization consistent with the conceptual design phase. The environment was calibrated with a Boeing HWB sizing study and validated using conventional wing case studies. A trade study was also performed to the set of identify input parameters that most greatly contributed to the variability of the structural weight. Since the environment requires lengthy computational times, the results of the parameter investigation were used to generate more computationally efficient approximation equations of the HWB structural weight to be utilized during the initial aircraft sizing process.

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Following the conceptual phase of aircraft design, sizing and performance estimations shift from historical-based empirical equations to physics-based simulations. The initial aircraft configuration is refined with a larger number of objectives and requirements, and certification regulations play a critical role in defining these. Analysis tools in the early phases of preliminary design have an important trade-off between accuracy, complexity, and computational efficiency. A number of analysis frameworks currently exist with varying levels of fidelity, multidisciplinary coupling, and limitations in the number of disciplines, degrees of freedom, and requirements they are able to implement. To enable efficient design space exploration (DSE), this paper proposes an integrated preliminary design framework that couples aerodynamics, structures, subsystems, aircraft performance, flight dynamics, and certification testing at varying levels of fidelity. This framework serves as a numerical testbed that can be used to explore the aircraft configuration and disciplinary design spaces, strength of disciplinary couplings, and propagate disciplinary uncertainties across the entire aircraft system. The framework is demonstrated using the horizontal tail of a large twin-aisle aircraft as a test case.