Hybrid airships are new-age air transportation vehicles that consume lesser fuel than conventional airplanes and take lesser flight time than conventional airships. In the present study, hybrid airship fuel consumption during cruise is minimized by optimizing volume and lift apportionment through optimization. In literature, cruise mode 1 (varying cruise speed), cruise mode 2 (varying lift coefficient), and combination of cruise modes 1 and 2 are detailed. This paper introduces two novel cruise modes, namely, cruise mode 4 (varying atmospheric density cruise) and cruise mode 5 (constant dynamics pressure cruise). All five cruise modes are investigated and formulated by posing as optimization problems considering fuel weight minimization as the objective function. Fuel weight minimization has been carried out for two time constraints (24 and 36 h). The optimization problems were solved using MATLAB optimization toolbox. From the results, it is found that cruise modes 4 and 5, which are having the highest mean total ratio and highest mean buoyancy ratio, provide least fuel consumption. The results indicated that cruise modes 1, 2, and 3 require 5–7% more fuel than cruise modes 4 and 5.
Hybrid Airship Fuel Optimization for Various Cruise Modes
Journal of Aircraft ; 59 , 4 ; 1041-1053
2022-01-25
13 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch