Collapsible Airship Fuselage for Drag Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current airships and space shuttles face challenges with high fuel consumption, drag losses, and limitations in atmospheric and space flight capabilities due to reliance on dynamic lift and light gas buoyancy, which restricts their efficiency and versatility.
Innovation Solution
An automatically deployable and collapsible airship with a combined gas cell and folding structure that uses static lift for takeoff and dynamic lift for flight, allowing it to transition between airship and airplane configurations, reducing drag and enabling space travel with reduced fuel consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If an airship uses dynamic lift for flight, then it can move like an airplane, but drag losses and fuel consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The airship employs variable geometry where the fuselage can transform between an inflated airship configuration and a collapsed airplane configuration. During takeoff and landing, the airship uses static lift with the inflated configuration. During cruise flight, it collapses into a streamlined airplane shape and uses dynamic lift, thus adapting its structure to minimize energy losses in different flight phases
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the physical state and geometry parameters of the fuselage dynamically. The fuselage transitions from an expanded spherical shape providing static buoyancy to a collapsed streamlined shape reducing drag, thereby optimizing the balance between static and dynamic lift throughout the flight mission
2Temperature
If a space shuttle uses conventional launch methods, then it can reach space, but fixed costs and fuel consumption are extremely high
Solution Approach 1:
The airship performs preliminary action by using static lift to ascend to high altitude before transitioning to airplane mode for horizontal flight and space launch. This preliminary buoyant ascent reduces the altitude that must be achieved through energy-intensive powered flight, thereby significantly reducing overall fuel consumption for reaching space
Solution Approach 2:
The flight mission to space is segmented into distinct phases: initial ascent using static lift in airship configuration, transition to horizontal flight using dynamic lift in airplane configuration, and final launch to space. This segmentation allows optimization of energy usage in each phase, avoiding the need for complete dependence on high-energy rocket propulsion from ground level
3Force
If an airship maintains a fixed inflated shape, then it can generate static lift, but it cannot efficiently travel through the atmosphere like an airplane
Solution Approach 1:
The fuselage is designed with dynamic collapsible structure that can change its geometry based on flight requirements. When static lift is needed, the fuselage inflates to a large volume configuration. When traveling through the atmosphere, it collapses into a streamlined shape, thus dynamically adapting to minimize drag losses while maintaining the ability to generate static lift when needed
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The airship achieves efficient takeoff and landing as an airship and flight as an airplane, minimizing drag losses and fuel usage, while enabling safe and quiet vertical takeoff and landing without special airports, and reducing fixed and variable costs by using static lift for sub-orbit space shuttle operations.
Implementation Method 1
Static buoyancy is generated by a gas cell filled with heated gas
Implementation Method 2
the object of the present invention is to form an automatically deployable and collapsible airship on the ground and in flight
Implementation Method 3
a helium pressure tank, an oxygen pressure tank, a hydrogen pressure tank and a vacuum pump
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3~4
AI summary
The invention relates to an airship which can be unfolded and folded up automatically on the ground and during flight and which can be operated as an aircraft or as a reusable space shuttle, having a combined collapsible gas cell (400), a grid network (600) which provides the shape, an aircraft body (200) comprising a cockpit (210), a cargo bay (220), a machine bay (230) and collapsible wheels (240), components for aircraft navigation control (300), two rocket motors (500L, 500R) which can be rotated, a collapsible control surface (700) and a mechanism for operation of the collapsible control surface (100). The combined collapsible gas cell (400) comprises an envelope (402) which can be folded and a housing (401) which cannot be folded. The housing (401) which cannot be folded is mounted on the inner walls and the bottom of the cargo bay (220). The gas cell (400) is filled with helium or hydrogen in the unfolded state, and is completely empty in the collapsed state. The envelope (402) which can be folded is held by the grid network (600) which provides the shape when in the unfolded state, and is located in the internal area of the housing (401), which cannot be folded, in the collapsed state.