Design, Analysis and Development of a Mini Airship

Most current aircraft are heavier-than-air vehicles. Thus, they require a large amount of power to take off and stay air-borne. This leads to the requirements to burn large amounts of aviation fuel that negatively impacts on the environment in terms of climate change. Overall, the aviation industry is one of the major contributors to global warming due to COX and NOX emissions. To address this, there is currently the drive to reduce the burning of aviation fuel, and in fact to transition to all electric aircraft. On the other hand, an airship is a lighter-than-air vehicle that is kept afloat by a gas that is lighter than air e.g. hydrogen or helium. Thus, the amount of power required to keep the vehicle in the air is much smaller and can be readily supplied from electrical sources, including solar panels. This paper involves the design, analysis and development of a hybrid airship with an exoskeleton to support an envelope to be filled with helium gas. The hybrid nature of the airship involves aerostatic and aerodynamic lift generation. The NACA6322 aerodynamic profile was used for the airship envelope and the exoskeleton. The aerodynamic performance of the envelope was analysed using the ANSYS Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis software, while the analysis of the structural performance of the exoskeleton was conducted using the ANSYS Structural software. The predicted lift and drag forces produced by the helium envelope, and the predicted deflections and stresses of the exoskeleton are discussed. The procedures for the manufacture and assembly of the hybrid airship with the exoskeleton are described and illustrated.