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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.

This paper presents a novel UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) designed for excellent low speed operations and VTOL performance. This aerial vehicle concept has been designed for maximizing the advantages by of the ACHEON (Aerial Coanda High Efficiency Orienting-jet Nozzle) propulsion system, which has been studied in a European commission under 7th framework programme. This UAS concept has been named MURALS (acronym of Multifunctional Unmanned Reconnaissance Aircraft for Low-speed and STOL operation). It has been studied as a joint activity of the members of the project as an evolution of a former concept, which has been developed during 80s and 90s by Aeritalia and Capuani. It has been adapted to host an ACHEON based propulsion system. In a first embodiment, the aircraft according to the invention has a not conventional shape with a single fuselage and its primary objective is to minimize the variation of the pitching moment allowing low speed operations.

One of the best airplanes ever realized by the European Aircraft industry was the Dornier Do 28D Skyservant, an extraordinary STOL light utility aircraft with the capability to carry up to 13 passengers. It has been a simple and rugged aircraft capable also of operating under arduous conditions and very easy and simple maintenance. The architecture of this airplane, which has operated actively for more than 20 years, is very interesting analyzing the implementation of a new propulsion system because of the unusual incorporation of two engines, as well as the two main landing gear shock struts of the faired main landing gear attached to short pylons on either side of the forward fuselage. This unconventional design allows an easy implementation of different propulsion units, such as the history of different experimental versions allowed.

The European project MAAT (Multi-body Advanced Airship for Transport) is producing the design of a transportation system for transport of people and goods, based on the cruiser feeder concept. This project defined novel airship concepts capable of handling safer than in the past hydrogen as a buoyant gas. In particular, it has explored novel variable shape airship concepts, which presents also intrinsic energetic advantages. It has recently conduced to the definition of an innovative design method based on the constructal principle, which applies to large transport vehicles and allows performing an effective energetic optimization and an effective optimization for the specific mission.

This paper presents a structural analysis of an engine chassis for a disc-shaped airship demonstrator. The objective was to verify such design solutions for application in the European Union's MAAT (Multibody Advanced Airship for Transport) project. In many airship designs, the engines are attached to the airship frame, located inside the balloon, in order to allow for thrust vector control. These airships have aerodynamic control surfaces to improve maneuverability. For the demonstrator, three engines are considered, with a non-rigid internal structure for their attachment. The engines are located on a horizontal plane (the symmetry plane of the balloon), with two lateral engines and one in front of the balloon. The chassis installation allows the engines to be attached either directly to the exterior envelope by using Kevlar connections, or to the central structural pipe. This chassis design has a simple construction, compared to typical structures addressed in the literature.