Metal-clad airship
Metal-clad airships are
History
Early designs
One of the earliest proposals for a flying machine based on rational principles was Francesco Lana de Terzi's design for a vacuum airship, c.1670. He had measured the pressure of air at sea level and based on this he proposed the first scientifically credible lifting medium in the form of hollow metal spheres from which all the air had been pumped out. His proposed methods of controlling height are still widely used; carrying ballast which may be dropped overboard to gain height, and venting the lifting containers to lose height.[5] In practice de Terzi's spheres would have collapsed under air pressure, and further developments had to wait for more practicable lifting gases.
The concept of a metal-clad dirigible airships was again explored in the late 1800s by Russian rocket theorist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.[6] He wrote that since his teens (in the early 1870s) "the idea of the all-metal aerostat has never left my mind"[7] and by 1891 he had produced detailed designs of a variable volume corrugated metal envelope airship that did not need ballonets. These were submitted to an Imperial department for aeronautics, which convened a conference to consider it. In 1891 they declined his request for a grant to produce a model, considering the idea "cannot have any considerable practical importance".[8] In 1892 he published his designs as Aerostat Metallitscheski (the all-metal dirgible aerostat).[9][10][11]
At around the same time, in 1892 the Russian Imperial war ministry agreed to let Schwarz build his metal airship in St Petersburg, though at his own expense.[12]
Schwarz
Schwarz's first aluminum ship of 1893[3] collapsed on inflation. His second airship flew at Tempelhof, Berlin in 1897, landed but then collapsed.[1]
Aircraft Development Corporation
In 1926 the Aircraft Development Corporation announced in Detroit, USA, that they were planning to construct a prototype.[13]
Slate All-Metal Airship
The 1929 Slate All-Metal Airship, built in Glendale, California, had a hull constructed from corrugated aluminum panels, along with a revolutionary propulsions system consisting of a "blower" at the nose of the airship which would propel the vehicle forward by creating a partial vacuum ahead of the vessel.[14] The centrifugal propulsion was later replaced by a conventional engine and propeller mounted on the tail end of the airship's gondola. The rolled seams intended to hold the panels together subsequently unrolled owing to gas pressure created by superheating during an attempted launch of the airship.
ZMC-2
The U.S. Navy's ZMC-2 was one of the few airships to be constructed in the late 1920s. Like the Schwarz airship of the 1890s,[15] the ZMC-2 had a system of framework integrated with stressed-skin construction that presaged both the pressurized fuselage construction used decades later in commercial airliners, and even elements of American lunar rockets, such as the Saturn V launch vehicle.[citation needed]
The
LZ-132
In the early 1950s, Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin GmbH commissioned a design study to explore the construction of the LZ-132.[citation needed] The project was abandoned.
American Skyship Industries
Between 1982 and 1995,
Varialift Airships
An aerostatic design from the company Varialift Airships PLC in the UK has designed an aluminium monocoque outer structure and internal skeleton, together with a patented buoyancy mechanism that it claims can allow it to operate at high altitudes and therefore fly faster than current designs, at lower fuel consumption levels than hybrids since no energy is needed to generate lift, only to power the craft forward.[17][18]
Notes
- ^ a b c Dooley A.193 (1893 airship never flew, but the 1897 flew at Berlin)
- ^ NASGIVM. 2006. NAS GROSSE ILE Archived 2011-07-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Dooley, A.185-A.186 citing Robinson, pp2-3
- ^ National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 2008. Slate Aircraft Corporation City of Glendale Negatives, Accession number 2006-0039
- ^ Ege 1973, p. 7.
- ISBN 0-89875-138-1.
- ^ Kosmodemyansky 2000 pages 18-19 "In 1885, at the age of 28, I decided to devote my energies to aeronautics and elaborate the theory of the all-metal dirigible."
- ^ Kosmodemyansky 2000 page 23
- ^ Carl Zeiss AG. 2005. The Route to the Stars, page 29
- ^ Kosmodemyansky 2000 pages 19-21, page 19 details pulleys for contracting the envelope, page 21 shows a larger version
- ^ Anatoly Zak. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Archived 2012-05-10 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Dooley A.183
- ^ "Metal-Covered Airships, Carriers of the Future". Trove.nla.gov.au. 1926-02-27. Retrieved 2014-04-02.
- ^ "The Slate All-Metal Airship". Flight: 101. 27 February 1929.
- ISBN 978-0-85429-145-8.
- ^ a b "NAS Grosse Ile Aircraft". Nasgi.net. Retrieved 2014-04-02.
- ^ Philpot, Mike (2012-12-11). "Varialift Airships event notice" (PDF). aerosociety.com. London, UK: Royal Aeronautical Society. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2013-05-14. Retrieved 2013-09-23.
- OCLC 748941704.
References
- Dooley, Sean C., The Development of Material-Adapted Structural Form - Part II: Appendices. THÈSE NO 2986 (2004), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- Ege, L. (1973). Balloons and airships. Blandford.
- Von A. Kosmodemyansky, X. Danko. 2000. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky His Life and Work: His Life and Work The Minerva Group, Inc., ISBN 0-89875-138-1
- https://www.varialift.com