Layout Analysis and Optimization of Airships with Thrust-Based Stability Augmentation

Abstract

Despite offering often significant advantages with respect to other flying machines, especially in terms of flight endurance, airships are typically harder to control. Technological solutions borrowed from the realm of shipbuilding, such as bow thrusters, have been largely experimented with to the extent of increasing maneuverability. More recently, also thrust vectoring has appeared as an effective solution to ameliorate maneuverability. However, with an increasing interest for high-altitude airships (HAAs) and autonomous flight and the ensuing need to reduce weight and lifting performance, design simplicity is a desirable goal. Besides saving weight, it would reduce complexity and increase time between overhauls, in turn enabling longer missions. In this perspective, an airship layout based on a set of non-tilting thrusters, optimally placed to be employed for both propulsion and attitude control, appears particularly interesting. If sufficiently effective, such configurations would reduce the need for control surfaces on aerodynamic empennages and the corresponding actuators. Clearly, from an airship design perspective, the adoption of many smaller thrusters instead of a few larger ones allows a potentially significant departure from more classical airship layouts. Where on one side attractive, this solution unlocks a number of design variables—for instance, the number of thrusters, as well as their positioning in the general layout, mutual tilt angles, etc.—to be set according simultaneously to propulsion and attitude control goals. In this paper, we explore the effect of a set of configuration parameters defining three-thrusters and four-thrusters layout, trying to capture their impact on an aggregated measure of control performance. To this aim, at first a stability augmentation system (SAS) is designed so as to stabilize the airship making use of thrusters instead of aerodynamic surfaces. Then a non-linear model of the airship is employed to test the airship in a set of virtual simulation scenarios. The analysis is carried out in a parameterized fashion, changing the values of configuration parameters pertaining to the thrusters layout so as to understand their respective effects. In a later stage, the choice of the optimal design values (i.e., the optimal layout) related to the thrusters is demanded to an optimizer. The paper is concluded by showing the results on a complete numerical test case, drawing conclusions on the relevance of certain design parameters on the considered performance, and commenting the features of an optimal configuration.