Exploring configuration design of high altitude airship

Aim. To our knowledge, the research on configuration design of high altitude airship (HAA) is just beginning. We now present the result of its exploration, i.e., an iterative sizing method of HAA configuration design. In HAA configuration design, there are too many interdependent parameters involved in the selection of HAA shape, structure, and propulsion and energy system, causing the iterative process to be usually exceedingly tedious. In our exploration, we selected the propulsion and energy system to concentrate our effort on reducing conspicuously the amount of iteration and proposed energy balance concept as the core concept of the iterative sizing method of configuration design. In the full paper, we explain in detail our iterative sizing method of HAA configuration design; in this abstract, we just add some pertinent remarks to the following two topics of explanation: (1) the iterative sizing method of HAA configuration design;(2) energy balance method; in topic 2, we give Fig.1 in the full paper, whose title is the energy balance of regenerative energy system, and explain the core concept with the help of Fig.1.We also present a HAA design example using the energy balance method to calculate the regenerative energy needed by the HAA; we give the calculated results in Figs.4 through 6 in the full paper and these calculated results do show that the amount of iteration can be reduced conspicuously. In Fig.7 in the full paper, we give the envelope of the airship in the example withstanding continuous wind speed up to 30 m/s.