Abstract
The theoretical fundamentals of aerostatics governing airship flight are revisited and presented in a simple manner. In the analysis it is assumed that the airship is flying in a standard atmosphere, and that both the atmospheric air and the gas inside the envelope of the airship are governed by a polytropic thermodynamic process. The equations formulated in this paper are used to solve some of the problems that were formulated in 1923 by the designers of a slide rule. The slide rule was used by the north-american pilots of the "Blimps" in the 1920s. The models presented in this paper should be considered not only to calculate the aerostatic equilibrium of the new generation airships, but also to evaluate the aerostatic performance of the balloons, that will be used in the future, to transport experimental devices to the surface of the terrestrial planets.
Data Availability Statement
Data will be made available on request.
Funding
This work was supported without any funding.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Ethical Approval and Consent to Participate
Not applicable.
Cite This Article
APA Style
Avila, R., & Syed, S. R. (2025). Airships: 100 Years of a Slide Rule, Thermodynamic Stability Equations Re-casted. Computational Environmental Heat Transfer, 1(1), 6–18. https://doi.org/10.62762/CEHT.2025.496709
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