Boeing Transonic Truss-Braced Wing Design the Topic of AIAA St. Louis Section Dinner Meeting

By Carmelo Turdo

The AIAA St. Louis Section held their most recent dinner meeting on Thursday, February 23, at Syberg's in Creve Coeur. AIAA members and guests filled the ballroom to have a delicious meal and learn about the Boeing Company's newest NASA project: the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator. The goal of the project is to select and develop the technologies that will be used in the next generation of single-aisle airliners, and the Boeing design has a very obvious feature: the truss-braced, high aspect-ratio wing. NASA announced the winning design in January, and the demonstrator's first flight is planned for 2028. The unique wing design will be combined with advanced powerplant technology as the design matures.

Laurette Lahey

The dinner meeting speaker, Laurette Lahey, is a Senior Director for Boeing Research and Technology based in Arlington, VA. She related her first-hand experience developing the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator as an outgrowth of NASA's Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) going back nearly two decades. The multi-phase program includes incorporating the Truss-Based Wing Design along with hybrid-electric propulsion to greatly decrease or eliminate the use fossil fuels in this class of aircraft.  

The January 18 NASA press conference announcing the Boeing selection can be seen below:

As mentioned above, the meeting was well-attended and included a large number of Boeing employees from the chapter membership. Here we have some views from Laurette Lahey's presentation, including the challenge coin appreciation gift awarded at the end of the program.