Thermal Characteristics and Icing Risk Analysis of Tethered Airships at Medium and Low Altitudes

EasyChair Preprint 7754

Abstract

In order to analyze the risk of icing that is affected by supercooled water droplets when the tethered airship hovering at mid-low altitude, the airship envelope was simplified as a boundary without wall thickness. The solar and infrared radiant heat transfer was loaded by Fluent-UDF, while the convective heat transfer inside and outside the envelope was obtained by coupled boundary method. The thermal characteristics of the tethered airship was numerical simulated. Based on which, the electric heating anti-icing analysis was conducted. The results show that, the temperature of the envelope is lower than the freezing point on the vernal equinox and winter solstice at 4km with wind speed of 10 m/s. While on summer solstice, the icing risk of the envelope is relative low. The envelope temperature may be increased effectively by adopting heating at the key area of the envelope.. The research conclusions provide a certain basis for improving the safety of the airship.

Keyphrases: Airship, Icing risk, Thermal characteristics, simulation

@booklet{EasyChair:7754,
  author    = {Lin Junyaun and Xu Zhehan and Liu Qiang and Fang Xiande and Dai Qiumin},
  title     = {Thermal Characteristics and Icing Risk Analysis of Tethered Airships at Medium and Low Altitudes},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 7754},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2022}}