Dynamic Modeling and Longitudinal Stability Analysis of a Stratospheric Dual-Hull Airship

This paper provided a design of a dual-hull airship concept. It contained two traditional airships hulls that were connected in the middle by a wing, and had more control surface area than the traditional airship of the similar weight. In addition, the dual-hull airship’s yawing and pitching moments can be provided by changing directions and creating different thrust by four propulsion units combined with fins. Then a 6-Degree of Freedom (DOF) dynamic model for the dual-hull airship was described in this paper. It updated the estimation method of the added mass, force and torque (aerodynamic and propulsion unit’s thrust) of the dual-hull airship. The open-loop disturbance feature of the longitudinal mode simulated by Simulink and compared the the dual-hull airship’s added mass with the traditional airship of the similar weight. The results show that the dual-hull airship has less resistance and better flexibility than the traditional airship when they are flying forward.