Design Methodology of a Small Unmanned Airship with Optimized Fins

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method for the design of a small unmanned airship with stability considerations. Conventional design methods for airship envelope require the structure weight including the fin weight to be fixed before determining the envelope size. One of the shortcomings of the traditional methodology is that the weight budget of the fin drives the fin design. In contrast to the conventional design methods, our method estimates the envelope size and the fin weight budget simultaneously. Our approach also shows how an airship fin could be optimized to improve directional stability. The design of a small unmanned airship is also discussed in this paper to demonstrate the methodology.