Abstract
A remotely controlled airship was designed, fabricated and demonstrated within a tight timespan of under a month after receiving the go-ahead. The main design requirement for this airship was to be able to operate from the Helipad located at an altitude of 6,572 feet AMSL under ISA+20 deg.C. The images of the terrain below were recorded during the flight and transmitted in real-time to a ground based system using an onboard telemetry system.The paper describes the methodology followed for sizing of the envelope and key components of the airship, and the procedure followed for in-house fabrication and testing. The major issues that cropped up during the operation of the airship in harsh weather conditions of rain and mild snow, as well as at night, are also highlighted. The demonstration established the efficacy of remotely controlled airships for aerial photography and data collection by snow scientists.
Highlights
Aerial surveillance usually requires monitoring the activities of people and/events over a designated area and long period of time from an airborne platform
Airships are aerodynamically shaped bodies filled with a “Lighter-Than-Air” (LTA) gas that displaces the ambient air, which results in a net upward force due to buoyancy
This methodology arrives at the baseline specifications of a manned airship with inputs on the user specified performance and operational requirements and has been suitably adapted by Gawale et al (2008) for the design and sizing of remotely controlled (RC) airships
Summary
Aerial surveillance usually requires monitoring the activities of people and/events over a designated area and long period of time from an airborne platform. The design features and attributes that an aerial surveillance airborne platform must possess should help accomplish this mission completely and efficiently. Airships are aerodynamically shaped bodies filled with a “Lighter-Than-Air” (LTA) gas that displaces the ambient air, which results in a net upward force due to buoyancy. This is called static (or buoyant) lift, since it is due to the inherent buoyant force, which is generated even when airship is stationary.
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