Concept Part3

These are concept renderings explaining the 3 phase of the ship. The ship should be fabricated with a engineered high elastic latex.

Ground mode is a compact vehicle. The outer skin raps around the entire vehicle except the cockpit area which should be enclosed in a hard structure for safety.
The inner skeleton act like structure which can extend to certain size to form the gas bag.

Flying Phase
The flying phase has 2 part, the lifting and gliding. The gas bag will be fully inflated with hydrogen to lift off  and when reach certain height, the inner structure changes shape to form wings to glide.

Foam Model Part2

Finishing off the model, the gas bag part and the transformed glider. Still pretty rough. Started to sketch over the photo in PS. Here is 2 of the sketches. Still missing the landing gear and the thrusters. Doing some more sketches on paper later.

Foam Model Part1

I have decided to move forward and start developing Concept 2 from last post.

Started to create some physical model to visualize the shape.

This is only the main body of the ship in landing phase. This is the hard part of the ship, consisting the cockpit, gas tank? engine and fuel cells. I cut the mid part for components and where the inflated balloon comes up.

This thing look like a UFO or Alien ship... the little wings are stabilizers to the gliding.

Concepts Part2

Developed from the previous concepts, 3 concepts came across my mind. The all have 1 identical feature, that is taking the large volume into the vertical space. This way, the vehicle will remain compact at ground level, not occupying a lot of land space.

Concept marked "1" is a concept driven from concept "2" from the last set. The giant gas bag is utilized as sails like sail boats, utilizing wind as it's power - I like to call them hydrogen sails. The sail split into 2 halves, they close up when the vehicle is going with the wind, the wind can push the vehicle forward, but when the vehicle is going against the wind, the sail split into 2 and became another set of wings.  In this case the wings of the aircraft can be smaller as the gas bag can go as large to satisfy the displacement requirement

Concept Marked "2" is an aircraft made from elastic material like "latex". It remains a small compact vehicle in the ground mode. When taking off, the body of the vehicle inflates with hydrogen, a inner structure is required to hold the vehicle in shape like graph 2. The gas bag can go as high as it requires to take off with the aid of the air ducts under the vehicle. When reached a certain height, the inner structure changes, a set of wings will morph out from the side of the vehicle, a large proportion of volume will be transferred to the wings making the gas bag smaller to minimize the wind and weather impact. I prefer this concept as it is very different and it resembles it's ancestors zeppelins.4

Concept Marked "3" is a aircraft inspired by star wars fighter ships. It has 2 large vertical wings inflated with hydrogen. In the center holding the 2 wings together is the main body of the ship, where containing hydrogen tanks, fuel cells and turbine engine. It also provides propulsion to the ship. The cockpit, for easy access, is hanged on the side of the ship. It consists a gyro to maintain the pilot in the same upright position through out the flight. The wings can deflate and retract into the main body. This idea sound a bit crazy, because it need to land vertical and after take off turn 90 degrees to a gliding position. It is fun to imagine aircraft take off and flip and glide away....

Concepts Part1

This stage of design is not so much about looks, aesthetics or style. It is focusing on solving the design problem: How to design the gas bag so it does not interfere with the flying experience and minimizing landing space requirement.

The initial Package drawing were drawn in Solidworks. Just to establish a basic skeleton to the aircraft, consisting the essential components - hydrogen tanks, fuel cells, turbine engine, seat for 1 person and most important the wing size. The wings will be inflated and take up vertical space as well.

The problem and it is the problem to all lighter than air aircraft - LTAA (even though this is only a semi-lighter than air aircraft) is it's gas bag. All LTAA requires a large amount of displacement to generate enough lift to lift the aircraft.

The idea of this concept is to reshape the gas bag and convert it into lifting surface - wings and turn the aircraft into a glider. In the history of LTAA, all the blimps were basically long cigar like tube shapes, some of them are very well streamlined against the frontal wind, but their extremely large body rendered them vulnerable to extreme weather, heavy cross wind, and making them harder to control and required a lot of power to move forward.

By spreading the volume of the gas bag into a large horizontal surface it can be utilized to generate lift for gliding making it easier to travel long distance and dramatically reduce power consumption, in the mean time making it easier to operate and adept to any weather conditions.

So based on the Package drawings, I started to sketch some ideas, just to play around with the configuration of the wings/gas bag. Trying to find a good configuration of the wing that provides enough volume but also requires less space. The design requirements for the wings are - they have to maintain enough volume for displacement but also maintain the air foil shape.

Concept marked "1" is a bi-wing (double wing) configuration. It is probably the most obvious idea, but it is proven to work. The bi-wing configuration provides good lift but produce more drag than single wing configurations, that is the reason it was render obsolete. With the design requirement of the wings multiple wings seem to be the better choice.

Concept marked "2" is a strange looking aircraft. The idea is simple, if the wings don't provide enough lift, just add an additional gas bag to fill the requirement. Of cause the gas bag on top is going to become a problem with the cross wind and frontal wind, but there is something cool about this aircraft, it is different from all other concepts, and the idea of utilizing vertical space comes to mind....

to be continued.....