BlendedNet++: A dataset and benchmark for field-resolved aerodynamics and inverse design of blended wing body aircraft

TL;DR

This paper introduces BlendedNet++, a large dataset of BWB aircraft aerodynamics, and develops deep learning models for real-time surface field prediction and inverse design, enabling efficient early-stage aircraft design.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive aerodynamic dataset and benchmarks surrogate models for rapid prediction and inverse design of BWB aircraft.

Findings

Transolver is the most accurate surrogate model for field prediction.

The inverse design pipeline achieves high accuracy with R^2 > 0.99.

Generated designs meet specific lift-to-drag targets confirmed by CFD.

Abstract

The conceptual design of Blended Wing Body (BWB) aircraft is often constrained by the high computational cost of resolving complex aerodynamics over a high-dimensional design space. While deep learning offers a pathway to rapid aerodynamic prediction and inverse design, its adoption in aerospace engineering is limited by a lack of large-scale, field-resolved training data. This work addresses this gap by introducing BlendedNet++, a comprehensive aerodynamic dataset comprising 12,492 unique BWB geometries, each evaluated using steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier--Stokes (RANS) simulations to provide integrated forces and dense surface fields (Cp, Cf). Leveraging this data, we establish a robust framework for two critical engineering tasks: (1) real-time prediction of surface aerodynamic fields using geometric deep learning models, and (2) generative inverse design. We benchmark five surrogate architectures, identifying Transolver as the most accurate for field predictions. Furthermore, we demonstrate a generative inverse design pipeline using conditional diffusion models combined with gradient-based refinement. This hybrid approach is shown to generate multiple feasible designs that satisfy specific lift-to-drag targets with high accuracy (R^2 > 0.99), as confirmed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. These resources enable a shift from iterative analysis to direct generation in early-stage BWB design.