Costs of Helium are increasing more rapidly than provided by economic analysts because of the high demanded if compared with actual production possibilities. These economic disadvantages are slowing many airship projects, because of the necessary costs that need to be faced for initial inflation. They are forcing the definition of novel airship architectures which could use hydrogen as buoyant gas with a higher level of safety than in the past.
This paper starts from those economic issues to define a general model based on the variable volume airship defined in the MAAT cruiser-feeder airship project. It defines a future hydrogen airships concept which could avoid the disasters of the past and maximize the safety of people and goods.
The model has been compared with the results of an optimization of the very general airship conceptual design based on Constructal theory. The goal of the optimization has been defined in terms of maximization of solar energy caption possibility, minimization of frontal area, volume, and energy consumption at a predefined operative altitude. A surprising accordance of the proposed model with the results of the Constructal optimization results has been obtained.
A comparison with a traditional model of airship has been performed and results have been validated by CFD simulation at different altitudes.
