A heat transient model for the thermal behavior prediction of stratospheric airships

The gas temperature of a stratospheric airship plays an important role in its flight dynamics. A multi-nodes heat transient model is proposed and evaluated by the theoretical solutions of the adiabatic processes and the high altitude flight test data. A thermodynamic analysis code for stratospheric airships (TACSA) is developed to investigate the ascent subcooling induced by the thermodynamic expansion and the descent superheating induced by the thermodynamic compression. The simulation results show that the airship volume, vertical speed and the solar radiation have evident influence on the ascent subcooling descent superheating effects.