Centrifugal Blower of Stratospheric Airship

Abstract

In order to keep airship shape and realize desired performance during the course of landing safely from 20-km altitude, a specific blower is needed to be designed, and its characteristics should be analyzed. The CFturbo software is used to design the stratospheric blower. The performance of the designed stratospheric blower is calculated by computational fluid dynamics software PumpLinx simulation. Then, the performance of the blower at different altitudes is analyzed by simulation. It is shown that the designed stratospheric blower can basically meet the requirements of the semirigid airship of 160 m in length. The blower can make the airship land safely, and its efficiency can reach about 77% in the stratosphere. As the altitude decreases, the efficiency and volume flow (at different heights) of the blower gradually decrease. In addition, the sensitivity of different geometric parameters to the efficiency is analyzed, which can provide a reference for the optimization design of the stratospheric blower.

Keywords

• Stratospheric airship
• CFturbo
• centrifugal blower
• PumpLinx
• sensitivity