What is an airship? What's the use of an airship?

An airship is an aircraft lighter than air.

People can not only ride and load goods. It can also be used in transportation, entertainment, disaster relief, film and television shooting, scientific experiments and so on.

Principle: The lift obtained by airship mainly comes from gases lighter than air, such as hydrogen and helium. Modern airships generally use safer helium to provide lift, and the engine installed on the airship provides part of the lift.

Extended data

According to the structure classification, it can be generally divided into rigid airship, semi-rigid airship and non-rigid or flexible airship. This is also the most important classification method for airships.

1, the airbag of the flexible airship has no rigid skeleton at all, and the shape of the airbag of the airship is maintained by the pressure difference between the internal air and the external air. The pressure in the airbag is usually 300 ~ 500 Pa higher than the external ambient pressure.

2. Rigid airship is a kind of airship, whose shape and rigidity are maintained by its internal skeleton (originally made of wood, then made of light metal materials such as aluminum alloy, but now composite materials such as high-strength and low-density carbon fiber are widely used). The external surface is covered with skin, and many independent inflatable airbags are installed inside the skeleton to provide lift for the airship.

The outermost skin of a rigid airship does not need to be airtight, but the skin of each small helium balloon inside must have good airtightness. Old led zeppelin is a typical rigid airship.

3. Semi-rigid airship mainly keeps its shape by the gas pressure in the airbag, and the other part also depends on the rigid skeleton. The main skeleton is the keel, and the typical airship is the German Lotte solar airship.

Zeppelin NT with new materials and technologies can also be regarded as a semi-rigid airship: it consists of three keels and 12 triangular frames, but the streamline shape of the airship hull cannot be maintained by the triangular frames, but must be maintained by the pressure value of the internal airbag exceeding the external environment.

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