Panel method predictions of added mass for flexible airship

Abstract

Abstract Because of the huge volume and inflated membrane structure of stratosphere airship, the deformation of stratosphere airship is very sensitive to the change of environment conditions such as wind, temperature and so on. The influence of deformation on manipulation and control is very remarkable. So, during the course of building flight dynamic model of the flexible airship, the added-mass matrix of deformation is very important part in the state equations of dynamic models. For obtaining the accurate added-mass matrix of different flexible airship, we proposed an approach that can calculate the added-mass matrix of a flexible airship with arbitrary geometry shape by the panel method. Through the comparison of results of computation and theory for ellipsoid of revolution and the flexible Skyship-500 airship, the proposed method can calculate the added-mass matrix for arbitrary geometric shape very accurately.