• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.170-187
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• 2012

Recent years have seen an outpour of revived interest in the use of airships for a number of applications.Present day developments in materials, propulsion, solar panels, and energy storage systems and the need for a more eco-oriented approach to flight are increasing the curiosity in airships, as the series of new projects deployed in recent years show; moreover, the exploitation of the always mounting simulation capabilities in CAD/CAE, CFD and FEA provided by modern computers allow an accurate design useful to optimize and reduce the development time of these vehicles.The purpose of this contribution is to examine the different aspects of airship development with a review of current modeling techniques for airship dynamics and aerodynamics along withconceptual design and optimization techniques, structural design and manufacturingtechnologies and, energy system technologies. A brief history of airships is presented followed by an analysis of conventional and unconventional airships including current projects and conceptual designs.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.56-69
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• 2006

For a relatively small country like Korea, a radionavigation system using airships can be considered, which is to provide the navigation service utilizing the stratospheric airships that are deployed in the stratosphere at the altitude of around 20-23km, and which is an independent or a back-up radionavigation system other than current GPS or GLONASS. In this paper, a feasibility study on the constellation of stratospheric airships for the navigation system has been performed. A measure of a geometrical condition between a receiver and navigation transmitters. called the DOP (Dilution of Precision), determines the resulting positioning error of the navigation system, if the error of range measurement is predictable. Therefore, with assumption that the range measurement error of the stratospheric airship navigation system is quite similar to GPS. the several DOP values have been used to evaluate the performance of the navigation system with comparing with the DOP values of GPS as the reference values. To provide the position information of the navigation transmitters to users, a receiver cluster system fixed on the ground, called an IGPS (inverted GPS), is proposed, and the error is also evaluated using the DOP values. Five areas around five major cities in South Korea have been selected, and then by numerical simulations the DOP values are compared those of GPS to assess the performance of the proposed navigation system using stratospheric airships. The possible frequency bands have been proposed. and then link budget of the navigation transmitter has been analyzed for the proposed navigation system.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.241-257
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• 2014

The modern development in design of airships and aerostats has led to unconventional configurations quite different from the classical ellipsoidal and spherical ones. This new class of air-vehicles presents a mass-to-volume ratio that can be considered very similar to the density of the fluid displaced by the vehicle itself, and as a consequence, modeling and simulation should consider the added masses in the equations of motion. The concept of added masses deals with the inertia added to a system, since an accelerating or decelerating body moving into a fluid displaces a volume of the neighboring fluid. The aim of this paper is to provide designers with the added masses matrix for more than twenty Lighter Than Air vehicles with unconventional shapes. Starting from a CAD model of a given shape, by applying a panel-like method, its external surface is properly meshed, using triangular elements. The methodology has been validated by comparing results obtained with data available in literature for a known benchmark shape, and the inaccuracies of predictions agree with the typical precision required in conceptual design. For each configuration, a CAD model and a related added masses matrix are provided, with the purpose of assisting the practitioner in the design and flight simulation of modern airships and scientific balloons.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.214-221
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• 2005

For decades, airships have being developed in Europe (especially German) and America. Airships are planning to be used for advertisements and airliners as well. In Korea, KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) is developing stratospheric communication airship and the similar research is carried out in Japan. Among them, Zeppelin of German has the cutting-edge airship technology with Zeppelin NT. In this paper, the flight performance and stability were evaluated by comparing mathematical theory and the real test. The stability was examined through dynamic modeling and assured by designing controllers at each flight mode. Elevator angle, rudder angle, magnitude of thrust and tilting angle of thrust vector were used as control inputs. Moreover, after measuring the airship velocity, flight direction, magnitude and direction of the wind, attitude angles and trajectories of the airship at each flight mode, the results were compared with the simulation. To get the reasonable data, low-pass filter and band-stop filter were designed to get rid of the sensor noise and engine vibration. The test was accomplished at cruise mode, turning mode, and deceleration. To conclude, with comparing the simulation data and flight test data, it could be known that the dynamic model used in this paper was reasonable.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.87-90
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• 2004

In this paper, geometrically non-linear finite element analyses were performed to study the mechanical behavior of the material system of the envelope of stratospheric airships. The microstructure of the load­bearing plain weave layer was identified and modeled. The Updated Lagrangian formulation was employed to consider the geometric non-linearity as well as the induced structural non-linearity for the fiber tows. The stress-strain behavior was predicted and the effective elastic modulus was calculated by numerical experiments. It was found the non-linear stress-strain curves were largely different from those by linear analysis with much higher non-linear elastic moduli. The difference was more distinguishable when the tow waviness was smaller.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.82-90
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• 2003

Recently, a new concept of telecommunication system, utilizing stratospheric platforms such as airships or airplanes, has been proposed. This system aims to provide broadband multimedia services, i.e. high-rate multimedia service, high-rate internet service, and leased line service. In this study, operation concept of the system is defined and by allocating required functions on the system and its subsystems, conceptual design of the ground control system for the stratospheric platforms is established and proposed.

• Composites Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.30-37
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• 2005

In this paper, geometrically non-linear finite element analyses were performed to study the mechanical behavior of the material system of the envelope of stratospheric airships. The microstructure of the load-bearing plain weave layer was identified and modeled. The Updated Lagrangian formulation was employed to consider the geometric non-linearity as well as the induced structural non-linearity for the fiber tows. The stress-strain behavior was predicted and the effective elastic modulus was calculated by numerical experiments. It was found the non-linear stress-strain curves were largely different from those by linear analysis. And non-linear elastic moduli were much higher than linear elastic moduli. The difference was more distinguishable when the tow waviness ratio was smaller.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.485-492
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• 2015

Small advance ratio and low Reynolds number of stratospheric propulsion system bring lots of challenges to the design of propellers. Contra-rotating propeller configuration is proposed to improve the propulsion efficiency. In this paper, the feasibility of contra-rotating propeller for stratospheric airship has been assessed and its performance has been investigated by wind tunnel tests. The experimental results indicate, at relatively low Reynolds number, although the advance ratio is fixed, the performance of propellers is different with variation of Reynolds number. Moreover, at the same Reynolds number, the efficiency of contra-rotating propeller achieved appears to be a few percent greater than that for a standard conventional propulsion system. It can be concluded that contra-rotating propellers would be an efficient means to improve the performance of stratospheric airship propulsion system.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.432-441
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• 2016

Solar energy is the ideal power choice for long-endurance stratospheric airships. The output performance of solar array on stratospheric airship is affected by several major factors: flying latitude, flight date, airship's attitude and the temperature of solar cell, but the research on the effect of these factors on output performance is rare. This paper establishes a new simplified analytical model with thermal effects to analyze the output performance of the solar array. This model consisting of the geometric model of stratospheric airship, solar radiation model and incident solar radiation model is developed using MATLAB computer program. Based on this model, the effects of the major factors on the output performance of the solar array are investigated expediently and easily. In the course of the research, the output power of solar array is calculated for five airship's latitudes of $0^{\circ}$, $15^{\circ}$, $30^{\circ}$, $45^{\circ}$ and $60^{\circ}$, four special dates and different attitudes of five pitch angles and four yaw angles. The effect of these factors on output performance is discussed in detail. The results are helpful for solving the energy problem of the long endurance airship and planning the airline.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.148-155
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• 2002

A study on the installation angle of solar panels is conducted as a conceptual study on solar-RFC(regenerative fuel cell) system for stratospheric airships. The airship heads for the west in winter days and the east in summer days according to wind directions. Considering this, it is found that when the solar panel is installed with the center angle of 30 degree the energy output of solar panels is maximized on winter solstice and satisfies the required energy of summer days as well. Although with the optimized solar panel installation angle, efficiency of the regenerative power system needs be improved to 47% to provide required energy of a 170m-long airship. And the required amount of efficiency improvement decreases as the airship size increases.