engleski

Innovative Airship Design for Smart Transportation

The European "Multibody Advanced Airship for Transport" (MAAT) project has proposed novel "green" air transport architecture, combining 2 different types of airships designs. The airship (1) called Cruiser, is designed for the horizontal movements, while the airship (2) called Feeder, ascents from ground to the Cruiser's altitude, where it docks to Cruiser in a unique airship system. The design of the docking operation has been the most challenging and complex task within the MAAT design, as nothing similar has ever been considered to our knowledge, except the docking of the Space Shuttle to the Space Station. The applied multidisciplinary analysis, which covered the docking operation, has involved the structural, propulsive and aerodynamic analysis. The aerodynamic forces and moments have been numerically simulated, as well as the pressure distribution on the MAAT airship surfaces, by applying the CFD software FlowVision. It is well known that the Lighter-Than-Air vehicles, like the "Zeppelin" airships, have intrinsic advantages for constructing a future generation of airships, enabling hovering capabilities and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). A new lightweight structural concept has been proposed, based on the use of Tensairity elements, which are expected to reduce significantly the airship structural weight. This comparison is based on the structural analysis performed with the Abaqus FEA software, and the results are presented and discussed. The lecture presents the best practices learned in such multidisciplinary iterative airships design, through which the final shape of the MAAT system has been achieved, and we envisage that such new "green" air transportation breakthrough concept will be further evolving to become a real transportation mean in the future., at the department of Software Engineering holding the chair of Visual Computing. His work is mostly related to Research and Development (R&D) projects, and his interest covers the topics of Scientific Visualization, Modelling and Simulation, Optimization methodologies and techniques, which are very often found together in solving complex problems within the multidisciplinary engineering and computer science domains. In his Ph.D. thesis "CFView-Computational Field Visualization System" he designed and developed the first-time-ever interactive visualization software adapted to numerical simulation solvers. During more than 30 years at VUB, he successfully participated in more than 20 European projects under the European Frameworks, EUREKA/ITEA and Tempus educational programs. He is author of more than 60 scientific papers in international reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and in addition, author of several book chapters and editor of few books. He is member of International Advisory Boards and Scientific Committees of Journals and Conferences, acting as chair, session organizer, reviewer and editor of respective papers proceedings.

Airship ; Dock ; Smart Transportation

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