Twin fuselages won the Volga-Dnepr Group advanced transport aircraft of the 21st Century competition.
The winning design (see picture below) has an external loading capability able to carry super heavy and outsize cargo suspended under a centre wing section between the two fuselages.
The winning team were three students from the Moscow Aviation Institute. They submitted a 200 page project called a Heavy transport aircraft concept with new aerodynamic configuration. The design is described by Volga-Dnepr as a, “triplane aircraft of the Antonov-225 Mriya type,” and the three students have been asked to join the company’s design bureau.
Volga-Dnepr Group deputy technical director and head of the design bureau, Artem Aroutyunov, says: “Through this exercise, which has realised all of our original goals, we have met a lot of talented people and received interesting, complex and detailed projects for transport aircraft and engine units from Russia, Bulgaria, Germany, Serbia and Ukraine. The best of them are real design solutions to be applied in the aviation industry.”
A runner up entrant was a blended wing body concept where the fuselage is integral to a large wing. This idea, called Future Airlifter, was submitted by a graduate of Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry. The winners of the year long contest were announced last month at the third International Air Transport Forum in Ulyanovsk (Russia).
