Mission-based multidisciplinary optimization of solar-powered hybrid airship

This paper presented a multidisciplinary optimization methodology of a high altitude solar-powered hybrid airship. A multidisciplinary model of the hybrid airship is proposed including the geometry, aerodynamics, structures, propulsions and energy consisting of the photovoltaic array and energy stored system (ESS). To achieve a continuous flight and reduce the total mass and energy cost, a multi-phase strategy including the climb, daytime cruise, glide and nighttime cruise is proposed. The mission-based optimization is achieved through an enhanced collaborative optimization and the result shows a large decrease in the total mass compared with a baseline design. Since the flight altitude has a great influence on the hybrid airship with the multi-phase strategy, a multi-objective optimization achieved by NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sort Genetic Algorithm-II), is carried out to discuss the design tradeoffs in different altitudes. The result also indicates that the multi-objective optimization provides a solution set so that the optimal design of the hybrid airship in different flight altitudes could be obtained.