Abstract
Saucer-shaped buoyancy-lifting airships have attracted worldwide attention due to their huge potential for stratospheric platform and cost-effective operation, especially in large load transportation. Combined saucer-shaped airship is a high-altitude, maneuverable, high buoyancy efficiency lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicle for providing continuous communications and surveillance capabilities over a wide geographical area. In this work, combined saucer-shaped airships are designed different in thickness-to-radius ratio but the same in semi-major axis. Based on the Reynolds-averaged N-S equations and k-ω SST turbulent model, numerical aerodynamic investigations on combined saucer-shaped stratospheric airships are conducted to confirm the influence of thickness-to-radius ratio on the aerodynamic forces, stability, and payloads. It is found that with the increased of thickness-to-radius ratio, the volume-to-area ratio increases, and the positive lift at the negative angles and the static instability in pitching channel is improved, while the positive lift at the positive attack angles and the lift-to-drag ratio decrease, and drag is significantly enhanced. That means the larger the thickness-to-radius ratio, the more the payload, but the worse the aerodynamic characteristic. The airship B, with the thickness-to-radius ratios of 1/2, provides average performance in buoyancy efficiency and drag characteristics. This investigation serves to provide reasonable reference for new concept design of load airships.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Chu A, Blackmore M, Oholendt RG (2007) A novel concept for stratospheric communications and surveillance: star light. Am Inst Aeronaut Astronaut 1–14
Smith MS, Rainwater EL (2004) Optimum designs for superpressure balloons, PSB1–0032-02
Bil C (204) Lighter-than-air stationary platform concept. In: 52nd aerospace sciences meeting, 13–17 Jan 2014, National Harbor, Maryland. AIAA 2014-0029
Ilieva G, Páscoa J, Dumas A (2014) MAAT–promising innovative design and green propulsive concept for future airship’s transport. Aerosp Sci Technol (35):1–14
Gnanaprakash K, Kamalraj KP (2011) Design-build-fly of OSIRCA: oblate spheroid indoor remotely controlled airship. AIAA 2011–6914
Dorrington GE (2006) Drag of spheroid-cone shaped airship. J Aircraft 43(2):363–371
Suefuku H, Hirayama T, Hirakawa Y, Takayama T (2010) Torus-type airship aiming at high airworthiness quality. In: 27th international congress of the aeronautical sciences, pp 1–10
Scott WB (2006) Novel hybrid near-space platform awaits a visionary financial angel. Aviat Wkly Space Technol 60
Lutz T, Funk P, Jakobi A, Wagner S (2002) Summary of aerodynamic studies on the Lotte airship. In: Proceeding of the 4th international airship convention and exhibition, Cambridge, UK
Funk P, Lutz T, Wagner S (2003) Experimental investigations on hull-fin interferences of the Lotte airship. Aero Space Sci Technol 7:603–610
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of China Academy of Sciences under Grant No.Y80A06A16Y.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Cui, Y., Yang, Y., Miao, J., Zhang, X. (2020). Numerical Aerodynamic and Design Analysis of Combined Saucer-Shaped Buoyancy-Lifting Airships. In: Wang, L., Wu, Y., Gong, J. (eds) Proceedings of the 6th China High Resolution Earth Observation Conference (CHREOC 2019). CHREOC 2019. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 657. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3947-3_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3947-3_26
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-3946-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-3947-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)