Structure Design for the Elettra Twin Flyer Prototype

This paper presents different structural solutions compared under the same manoeuvrability and operativity requirements. The structures to be analysed are chosen from an initial set, selected among many solutions which fulfil the dimensional requirements. The airship, in fact, has to be big enough to accommodate a pre-determined volume of payload, has to accommodate the motors in pre-defined locations to allow a good manoeuvrability while limiting the structural deformations, must be able to house all the systems necessary for its operation and should be able to contain enough volume of helium as to sustain at least the 95 % of the structure weight. To minimize the costs of the structural analysis two configurations has been selected as the most representative of the many configurations proposed: the non-rigid double-hull (Figure 1) and the rigid soap-shape airship (Figure 2). Among the available aeronautical technologies, the aluminium truss and the carbon sandwich structures have been considered for the exoskeleton of the soap-shape airship. On the other hand, the structure of the double-hull is too complex to be realized by standard aluminium components, so only the carbon sandwich solution has been analysed.