Advanced Technologies for Modern Airship

anyone who is fond of aviation cannot dismiss airships and the luxurious air travel they have the potential to provide to encash the romanticism associated with the splendor of boundless air travel that an airship can offer the italian design studio lazarini showcased their 150 meter airship style super yacht concept powered by solar cells and buoyed by helium gas in this video we are going to look at some of the technologies that have been recently patented to make airship travel once again safe and efficient we will also explore the concept of vacuum airship that has been around for nearly 500 years but it is only now that material is available to make it possible so let's begin just imagine your own relatively small personal airship floating around without the worry of any fuel shortage perhaps a younger generation can get some sense of it while watching the nintendo's game character mario comfortably traveling in the odyssey or anime fans can appreciate the joys of exploration and hunting trips abroad the quinzaza airship as shown in the series drifting dragons many of us think of airships as machines of a bygone era and yet every now and then we keep hearing that these giant aerial vehicles are making a comeback but just like the flying car the news never seems to realize it has to be mentioned though that unlike flying cars airships have been in existence and are being used in niche areas such as surveillance broadcast marketing and even for passenger transport for example in germany airship flights can be booked for sightseeing they travel between towns and around cities every year from april to october these are helium film zeppelin nt semi-rigid airships that have been in operation since 2001. they can carry 12 passengers or 1900 kilograms of payload despite their obvious benefits airships haven't become mainstream however with the push for greener more sustainable aviation and recent developments in material technology things are shaking up the aviation giant lockheed martin california-based aeros uk-based hiv french company flying whales canada base bas international and the chinese company quan chi science are all pursuing different airships with advanced technology these technologies enable more efficient flights with low maintenance and require almost zero ground crew for mooring and operations the market giant amazon has also put its weight in pursuing airship to be used as a flying warehouse which it is calling an airborne fulfillment center a patent was filed by amazon which suggests that drones will descend from the airship to drop goods at specific locations on the ground the aerial warehouses would visit places where amazon expects the demand for certain goods to boom for example it could be near sporting events or festivals where they would sell food or souvenirs to spectators just before we dive into recent research and developments that have made use of airships more compelling let's explore one particular chapter of aviation history that is very relevant in 1670 francesco lana proposed a floating airship that did not use any lighter than air gas but instead used vacuum the benefit was obvious hydrogen is 14 times lighter than air helium is seven times lighter vacuum well it doesn't have any weight so if we were to design a vessel that could hold a vacuum then we have the potential to create an airship that is less than half the size of a hydrogen-filled airship the problem however is that till recently we did not have materials that are strong enough to hold a vacuum and still be lighter than the air that they have displaced we live under a sea of air and the atmospheric pressure although we don't feel it is immense that is over a hundred thousand newtons per square meter to give an idea the pressure exerted against the ground by an elephant's weight distributed evenly over its four feet is less than the atmospheric pressure and it is this pressure that crushes any lightweight structure that tries to hold a vacuum we don't feel this pressure because our inside pressure is the same as the outside pressure but if you try to take air out of a juice box with a straw you will be able to notice the effects of this crushing force interestingly we have made vessels that have successfully carried humans to the bottom of the mariana trench where the pressure outside was more than a thousand times the inside vessel pressure but weight wasn't an issue in making those submarines mathematically a hollow swear is the perfect shape to hold a vacuum but researchers had shown that there is no conventional material that can be made into a thin shell sphere which doesn't get crushed while holding a vacuum and is lighter than the air it displaces the buckling forces exceed the material strength having said that recent advancement have indicated that with new age materials we can build non-homogenous rigid structures using beams to form icosahedron shapes with mylar or xylon skin to create vacuum lighter than air vehicles this research was carried out lately for the u.s air force it must be mentioned here that so far these vacuum-based airship designs are still heavier than the zeppelin nt and airlander and therefore their payload capacity is less it is a step in the right direction though to dig deeper an important parameter for airship design needs to be understood it is the ratio of the total weight to the buoyant lift force denoted by w orb this ratio has to be less than 1 for an airship to rise the lower the weight to buoyant force ratio of an airship the more payload it can carry for a given volume which translates into greater transportation efficiency modern materials enable the construction of vehicles with much lower w orb than in the past modern airship often achieve w or b ratios of less than 0.3 the zeppelin nt has an estimated skin plus frame w by b ratio of just 0.18 the vacuum a ship made with ultra high modulus carbon fiber and beryllium skin achieve a w by b ratio of 0.79 with graphene based materials in the future it can reduce to 0.57 so there's still a long way to go the idea is appealing as it sets aside two major problems faced by the filling gases in an airship that is flammability of hydrogen and the usage of non-renewable source that is helium there is also much research that has gone into making the modern airships more aerodynamic for optimal shape of the airship a fineness ratio of 4.62 was found fineness ratio is defined as the airship's maximum length divided by the maximum diameter the longer an airship the less pressure drag it experiences for a given volume but the more skin friction drag it incurs therefore there is an optimal fineness ratio of 4.62 where the sum of skin friction drag and the pressure drag is a minimum on a separate front it was found by tests that stern mounted propellers can reduce the power of an airship by as much as 26 percent as they energize the boundary layer before separation for powering the airships china has already carried out flights with flexible thin film solar panels forming the envelope using electric motors in conjunction with solar panels could immensely reduce the weight that is carried compared to when using an internal combustion engine with fuel to drive propellers note that the relatively lightweight motors do not require a heavy supporting structure as engines do and this reduces the weight of the airship further modern solar powered chinese airships can stay in the air for up to six months at a time similarly research on hydrogen-powered airships is also being carried out despite many finding it questionable for safety reasons but by compartmentalizing hydrogen in multiple balance allowing hydrogen to diffuse below combustible concentration in case of leaks and using separators that mitigate thermal propagation safe hydrogen airships can be produced these would be primarily used for carbo transport it would take years of safe cargo operations and proven safety record before any passenger flights are allowed hydrogen airships do have their benefits the payloads are higher for the same size of ship and hydrogen is three times cheaper than helium hydrogen gas can be produced anywhere in the world unlike helium new chest vectoring systems have been developed and tested that allow the airship to move without the need of ground crew to eliminate the need of ballast compression systems have been made that compress helium from balance into storage tanks after landing la cerini have also indicated the use of this system in their flying super yacht so the technologies are certainly there to aid the new generation of airships as reported by the bbc there could be up to 150 cargo airships alone operating in our skies in the next eight years and with this the video is concluded if you learn something from this video then please do give it a thumbs up thank you for your attention

Channel: Electric Aviation

Views: 309,625

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Id: TIM-K25GhnU

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022