This paper presents the new Hydrogen Fire-safe Airship system that overcomes the limitations present in previous airships designs of that kind, when considering their functioning at advanced operative position. Hydrogen is considered to be more effective than helium because of its low-cost production by hydrolysis, which process is nicely driven only by the photovoltaic energy.
This paper presents a novel architectural concept of the buoyant balloon designed to increase the fire related safety, when applying hydrogen as the buoyant gas. The proposed buoyant volume is designed as a multi-balloon structure with a naturally ventilated shape, to ensure that hydrogen cannot reach the dangerous concentration level in the central airship balloon.
This concept is expected to be the start of a novel hydrogen airship type, to be much safer than preceding ones. It permits to reduce the traditional economic costs, when compared with helium inflated airships, due to the helium scarcity in the world gas resources and its related production costs.
This paper presents the volumetric analysis necessary for a preliminary design activity of this novel control system of the ballonets in this airship concept and to define the design of the airship's architecture.
