Study on Novel Layout of Buoyancy-lifting Integrated Airship with High Lift-to-drag Ratio

Abstract

High lift-to-drag ratio design for buoyancy-lifting integrated airship has become a urgent key problem to be solved,and the hull is the decisive part to the lift-to-drag ratio of the whole airship.Aiming at the difficulty of the high lift-to-drag ratio airship configuration design and complicate constrained requirements,effectively combined with airship hull fine design,flow control technology and lifting body concept,using high precision aerodynamic numerical simulation method,several new airship hull configuration types are explored and built,such as airship hull with lift-enhanced strake wing and center airfoil body hull with end-plates.The influence of key geometric parameters on the high lift-to-drag ratio features is studied,and a new buoyancy-lifting airship hull with high liftto-drag ratio is received.The result shows that compared with the original airship hull,under the constraint of volume and adjusting the width of the hull properly,the maximum lift-drag ratio of the airship hull with lift-enhanced strake wing can be increased about 77%,the maximum lift-drag ratio of the center airfoil body hull with end-plates is 3.95,compared with the original airship hull′s maximum lift-drag ratio which is 2.13,the promotion amount is at least 85.4%.

Keywords

• airships
• buoyancy-lifting
• lifting body
• high lift-to-drag ratio design
• cfd