Airships have experienced a global renaissance in recent years. With a length of nearly 300 metres, a payload of 160 tonnes was the target. This enormous capacity was intended primarily for transporting large-scale equipment such as turbines and transformers, which currently can only be moved from production sites to their destination via a combination of road and sea transport. Given that this method achieves an average speed of less than 10 km/h, the CargoLifter’s target cruising speed of approximately 90 km/h would significantly shorten transport times. Beyond this, the nature of an airship offers another decisive advantage: the object to be transported could be lifted while floating upright using a crane system and anchoring device at the producer’s site, then carried directly by air to its destination, minimising transport distances.
The development of such an airship raises countless questions across many technical fields. As a specialist in aerodynamics, FlowMotion was tasked with addressing the aerodynamic shaping. The defined objectives included:
How to minimise air resistance and thus fuel consumption?
How to stabilise an object of this size?
What form should the rudders and steering rotors take?
What happens when exiting the hangar in strong crosswinds?
This hangar, with a length of over 300 m, a width of 200 m, and a height of 100 m (the Statue of Liberty can stand upright inside it), is as impressive as the CargoLifter itself.
Investigations utilised both wind tunnel measurements and, depending on the specific query, various Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation methods. The results from these different methods were meticulously analysed and compared, allowing the shape of the CargoLifter to be continuously refined while considering various aspects.
