Experimental investigation on the longitudinal aerodynamic performance and drag reduction of a stratospheric airship

A wind tunnel test is performed to investigate the effect of different configurations on the longitudinal aerodynamic performances of a stratospheric airship model based on the prototype of HiSentinel Airship 50. It is found that the cross fin configuration has larger drag and lift than the Y fin configuration. The cross fin configuration also provides larger pitching momentum, which suggests a positive effect for the improvement of the airship static stability. Considering the additional drag component induced by the cross fin, micro vortex generators (MVG) are fixed at the rearend of the airship to inhibit flow separation of aft-body and reduce the total drag. The result shows that, in the case of α=8°, β=0° or β=-8°, α=0°, the adoption of MVGs brings a relatively significant drag reduction, and the efficiency still higher for smaller and closer MVGs.