RU2511500C2 - Aerostatic airborne vehicle (versions) - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: transport.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to aircraft engineering. In compliance with this invention, this airborne vehicle comprises controlled engine and cargo engine-free aerostat modules. In compliance with first version, said modules have front and lateral docking systems for assembly to airborne vehicle. In compliance with second version, said modules comprise device for mutual detection and approach on ground and in air. In compliance with third version, load-bearing part of said modules is composed by gas and heat aerostats. Aerostatic complex of every module incorporates structural platform that makes a basic structure for assembly of modules to airborne vehicle. In compliance with fourth version, shells of said gas and heat aerostats make sectors of integral shell approximating in shape to semi-cylinder. Side sectors are gas sectors while mid sectors are heat sectors. In compliance with fifth version, this vehicle comprises means to control heat aerostats ventilation.

EFFECT: variable configuration and load-lifting capacity, ruled out balancing.

5 cl, 10 dwg

Description

The invention relates to aviation, in particular to aircraft lighter than air.

A well-known aircraft is lighter than air — an aerostat and its controlled form — an airship (Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M., Scientific Publishing House “Big Russian Encyclopedia”, 2002, p.88, article “Aerostat”).

A well-known aircraft - an airship has a shell filled with light gas, and can lift into the air and carry (transport) cargo, the weight of which in accordance with the Archimedes Law is determined by the volume of the shell and the difference in the specific gravities of the ambient air and the light gas filling the shell.

A specific airship is calculated and manufactured to lift a certain maximum load and cannot lift a load greater than the calculated one. For a larger load, another airship is needed, and for transportation of a smaller load, ballast (useless cargo) is taken on board the airship or light gas is dumped within certain limits. Transportation of small cargo with a large airship is not economically viable.

The cargo during transportation by the airship is placed in the cargo compartment or on the external suspension under the airship. For transportation of bulky goods, a complex external suspension system is used on multi-meter cables under the airship. Controlling the movement of the airship-cargo system in this case is extremely complicated by various kinds of disturbing factors.

The descent and landing of the airship for loading and unloading are associated with counteracting its inherent lifting force. This counteraction is small while the lifting force is balanced by the load. The retention of an empty airship during loading and unloading is a big technical problem, it can be solved by approaching the airship to the ground structures, replacing the removed load with ballast or dumping part of the light gas, which is ruinous.

In the proposed aerostatic aircraft transformer (hereinafter - the aircraft), these problems do not arise due to its fundamental differences from the known structures. These differences are set forth in five independent claims linked by a single concept.

Analogs of the invention:

1. Patent KR 20040091795 “Aircraft buoyancy control system by controlling the pressure in a carrier gas cylinder and using the heat of exhaust from an onboard internal combustion engine to maintain it”;

2. Patent US 3801044 "Winged aircraft adapted for takeoff and landing with a large pitch angle by using an aerostatic structure ...";

3. Patent RU 2070136 “Semi-rigid guided aerostatic aircraft with a variable-shaped hull”

4. Patent DE 3633143.0 "(Ökologisches Lufttransportsistem - ÖLTS" (Environmental Air Transport System).

In the first analogue of the invention, it is proposed, in particular, to control the buoyancy of an aircraft by controlling the pressure in the carrier gas cylinder and using the heat of exhaust of an onboard internal combustion engine to maintain it.

In our case, it doesn’t matter how the buoyancy of the apparatus is maintained and how the carrier gas is heated, it’s important that the commercial cargo is carried by hot air balloons, ventilated by hot air, changing the ventilation parameters of which you can carry out a wide maneuver in height, significantly change the lifting capacity of the coupling, for example, with partial unloading at intermediate points on the route. When fully unloaded, the empty flight does not require hot air balloons and their shells are folded (absorbed in the gap between gas balloons by reversing the ventilation system) to reduce the midship and windage of the aircraft.

Empty aircraft landing occurs by overcoming by vertical thrust of the rotated propellers a small excess of the alloyed force of gas balloons over the weight of the aircraft.

In the second analogue of the invention, the aerostat component serves to provide a steep trajectory of the aircraft during takeoff and landing, which is not used in the design of our aircraft.

The third analogue of the invention uses the principle of thermal ballasting of aerostatic aircraft. The shell of a hot air balloon is located inside the shell of a gas balloon and filling it with hot air can provide partial or full lifting of a commercial cargo, but this is not the subject of our invention.

In the fourth, closest analogue of the invention, it is proposed, in particular, the option of sharing motorized balloons (airships) and aerostats without engines for lifting and transporting heavy loads by packing balloons around the transported cargo, i.e. by using cargo as the basic package design.

In another embodiment, an increase in the overall carrying capacity of the system is proposed by towing a non-powered aerostat on a cable coupler.

In the third version, it is proposed to build transport airships from a larger or smaller number of standard sections with a common air tunnel in which engines and propellers are located.

All of these are completely feasible options for a transport balloon system, however, each of them has serious drawbacks that are fundamentally excluded in our invention. The main ones are:

- in the first embodiment, for the transportation of each variant of the total load, a specific rigging system is required that distributes the load between the bearing balloons;

- in the second version, towing during wind that does not coincide with the course of the “caravan” is excluded, and transportation of the common single load is excluded;

- in the third version, for each cargo range, although from standard blocks, a special airship is built that corresponds to the load only in terms of alloy power without taking into account its geometry.

In all cases, landing, loading and unloading is a separate complex technical problem related to the retention of an aircraft tearing into the sky.

All options include rigid skeleton balloons, the manufacture of which requires grandiose factory stocks, more grandiose than at sea shipyards.

For linking balloons into a package, mounting units on frames are used that violate the integrity of the shells and require special sealing to prevent leakage of helium through a node constantly pumped by variable loads.

In our Aerostatic Transformer Aircraft (LA), the required load capacity is achieved by a set of standard modules of the required total load capacity, the modules are connected by docking their power platforms in a rigid structure that accepts the weight of the total load on the external suspension and distributes it to all structural elements.

Docking tools allow you to adapt the aircraft to the cargo, collecting modules in the "well" for transporting cargo of large vertical dimension inside this "well", in the "square" covering the long cargo (ship, bridge span, etc.) and other configurations. At the same time, for lifting heavy loads, the modules can be connected in multi-tiered structures.

Motor modules can be located at the ends of the aircraft, providing controllability in any direction of the wind, can be located with a cross relative to the transported superheavy cargo to parry displacements when it is mounted on a technological seat.

Three-chamber semi-cylindrical integral shells seamlessly drawn by extrusion, the integrity of which is not violated for technological reasons, because the frameless design of balloons with external power platforms of the modules was used, they retain their transverse dimension and section shape for any standard range of their carrying capacity, as it is a function of only the length of the module.

The technical result from the use of the proposed aerostatic transformer aircraft consists in the possibility of creating a low-cost universal transport system consisting of aircraft capable of varying their carrying capacity over a wide range depending on the weight of the cargo intended for transportation, adapting their configuration to the cargo transported on external load, landing on the ground for loading and unloading or hanging at a height convenient for securing cargo on an external load, with a large install the delivered building blocks and technological equipment to the designated seats for accuracy, change crews and motor modules during the flight along a regular long route, without resorting to intermediate landings for refueling and crew rest.

The indicated technical result is achieved by the fact that already existing technologies, engines and on-board equipment are used to create the aircraft, frameless balloons in integral shells and power platforms separate from the balloons are used, which allows them to be manufactured at different specialized manufactures and combined only at the final stages of assembly. use advanced extrusion technology in the production of integrated shells of the same diameter and cross section for modules of different load capacities Changing only the length of the preform.

The specified technical result is also achieved by the fact that the aircraft has a modular structure, i.e. It is composed of standard modules: motor and cargo, the number of which and the configuration of the hitch are determined by the specific transport task.

The indicated technical result is also achieved by the fact that the means of mutual search, rendezvous and rigid docking of the modules are introduced into a single mechanical system - an aircraft, which allows assembling modules on the ground and in the air into couplers of various configurations, adapting the aircraft to the load moved on the external load.

The specified technical result is also achieved by the fact that each engine and each cargo module of the aircraft consist of three parallel located balloons enclosed in a common integral shell having the shape of a cylindrical sector (half cylinder), divided, in turn, into three sectors (figure 5) . Two extreme ones, filled with light gas (gas balloons), compensate for the weight of the module structure, the third - a thermal balloon placed between them, when filled with hot air, provides a lift of the payload. The use of an integrated shell gives additional technical results: improving the aerodynamics of aircraft, reducing the surface area and weight of balloon shells, reducing heat loss through the surface.

The indicated technical result is also achieved by the fact that the hot air balloons are ventilated with hot air circulating through heat exchangers that utilize the heat of the exhaust gases of the engines and / or heated by other methods, and control of the ventilation parameters allows for a wide maneuver in height and control the load distribution on the combined power platform of the aircraft fold thermal balloons (suck in between gas balloons, reversing ventilation) during empty flight to reduce mid I sail LA (Figure 6).

Figure 1 shows the proposed aircraft. The aircraft contains a motor module 1 (in detail in FIGS. 2 and 3) and cargo modules 2 (in detail in FIG. 4). 2-6, the docking nodes are also conventionally designated: frontal 7 and lateral 8 (motor modules are equipped only with frontal) and gas 3 and thermal 4 balloons, which are part of all modules in the form of sectors of the integral shell 6. Adaptation of the aircraft to the cargo is shown Fig.7-9.

Figure 10 shows a block diagram of a ventilation system for hot air balloons, where: fan - 16, air flow distributor - 17, engine exhaust heat exchanger with ventilated air - 18, ventilated air heater - 19, ventilated air cooling radiator - 20, shell a hot air balloon - 21, a block of temperature sensors - 22, a control unit for thermal conditions - 23, a block of kingstones - 24.

The use of aerostatic transformer aircraft

Depending on the current transport task, the appearance of the aircraft is determined: the number and type of modules included in the aircraft, and the configuration of their coupling.

When transporting ordinary goods in the cargo compartments of the modules, a simple coupling can be used - a longitudinal row of modules (Fig. 1) or a double parallel coupling of the rows (Fig. 7).

When performing complex transport operations, for example, transportation of a bridge farm, sea or river vessel or gas tank with liquefied gas 13, an extended coupling of the rows (Fig. 7).

When transporting drilling, relay towers and other vertical structures - coupling "well" one - or two-tier (Fig. 8).

For handling and better dynamics, the engine modules in the hitch are located in the head and tail of the aircraft. In operations involving the installation of the delivered cargo to the technological place, you may need a coupler with four “cross” motor modules (Fig. 9), which are controlled by a computer using GLONAS or GPS signals and highly sensitive accelerometers, as the precise installation of superheavy structures (turbine generators of hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plant reactors, etc.) requires a large available power for instantly counteracting the disturbances that arise.

Figures 2 and 3 show the layout of the motor module: the power platform of module 5 is the basic element of the prefabricated aircraft, inherent in all modules, propellers of the aircraft 9 are blocks of counter-rotating coaxial propellers in ring nozzles that can rotate around three mutually perpendicular axes (vector control traction); integral shell of the aerostat complex of the motor module 6; frontal docking units 7.

Balloon complexes of cargo modules also consist of three balloons in integrated shells (Fig.6). In an empty flight, the 6 ”integrated balloon segment that can be completely folded between gas balloons (sucked up by ventilation).

The aircraft, whose modules are “weightless” with gas balloons, is assembled manually or with the help of self-propelled manipulators near the ground, loaded and “pops up” as the hot air balloons are filled with hot air and freed up for free flight like a regular airship. Assembly / disassembly of aircraft in the air and even in flight is possible using the search and docking systems of the modules. On long-distance permanent routes (air lines), it is advisable to use a “shoulder” refueling system and crew changes together with motor modules (as is customary on railways) without landing the entire aircraft.

For landing, it is enough to stop blowing warm air through the shells of hot air balloons, and to accelerate the descent, cool the air by passing through a radiator or vent warm air through kingstones (Fig. 10). By controlling the temperature regime of hot air balloons and moonlighting with propellers, you can control the vertical movement of the aircraft until it hangs at a given height and provide accurate positioning of the cargo when it is installed on technological seats.

Claims (5)

1. Aerostatic aircraft, assembled from controlled motor and uncontrolled non-motorized cargo modules, characterized in that these modules have front and side docking systems that provide assembly of the aircraft of the required carrying capacity in a variety of configurations. 2. An aerostatic aircraft assembled from controlled motor and uncontrolled non-motorized cargo modules having front and side docking systems providing assembly of the aircraft of the required carrying capacity in various configurations, characterized in that it can be assembled from separate modules and rebuild as on the ground, and in the air, in motion or in hovering mode, for which devices for mutual search and rapprochement of modules for docking have been introduced. 3. Aerostatic aircraft assembled from controlled motor and uncontrolled non-motorized cargo modules having docking systems providing assembly of the aircraft of the required carrying capacity in various configurations, consisting of modules, the bearing part of which are complexes of gas and thermal balloons, characterized in that the balloon the complex of each module carries a power platform, which is the basic design for assembling modules in an aircraft. 4. Aerostatic aircraft assembled from controlled motor and uncontrolled non-motorized cargo modules having docking systems providing assembly of an aircraft of required carrying capacity in various configurations, in which modules with gas and thermal balloons are used, characterized in that the shells of gas and thermal balloons are they are sectors of an integral shell close in shape to a half-cylinder, lateral sectors are gas, medium ones are thermal. 5. Aerostatic aircraft assembled from controlled motor and uncontrolled non-motorized cargo modules having docking systems that provide assembly of the aircraft of the required carrying capacity in various configurations, in which gas balloons are used that carry the weight of the apparatus structure and hot air balloons ventilated with hot air carry useful (commercial) cargo, the shells of which are sectors of an integrated shell similar in shape to a half-cylinder, the lateral sectors are gas, medium e - thermal, characterized in that the control of ventilation parameters of hot air balloons allows you to change the aircraft's cargo capacity, flight altitude, take off, hover at a given height and landing, maintain the geometry of the frameless shells of balloons and fold the shells of hot air balloons with a suction during empty flight between the shells of gas balloons air contained in them.

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