Interest on airships has gained momentum in the last few years, with the focus on their suitability to be used in the stratosphere (known as HAPS or High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites) or as a more sustainable alternative for air cargo. The development of an accurate dynamic and kinematic model for such vehicles is critical to ensure their controllability by modern autopilots. The parameters used to define the models are derived from airship aerodynamic characteristics, which shall be defined both statically and dynamically. While static behavior can be obtained straightforward, dynamic data represented by means of the aerodynamic stability derivatives are much harder to calculate. In this work, we present a numerical tool based on potential aerodynamics that is able to calculate the added mass term of a certain airship body that is parametrically defined. Thus, it is possible to quickly estimate the added mass for a large number of body shapes during the early design phases. Furthermore, a method is proposed to experimentally validate the numerical results produced by the potential aerodynamic code. It involves the design of an actuation system capable to produce the required longitudinal and angular accelerations to the wind tunnel model. That is a non-trivial test as the magnitude of the added mass is much smaller than the actual mass of the model. Thus, the parameters defining the model design, the accelerations involved and the instrumentation to be used must be carefully analyzed.
Advances in added mass calculation of airship bodies
15TH INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON AERONAUTICS, AUTOMOTIVE, AND RAILWAY ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGIES (BulTrans-2023) ; 2023 ; Sozopol, Bulgaria
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 3129 , 1
2024-02-22
6 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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