How Airships Work

Most people love watching airships during their flight but rarely try to learn how these airships work or what is the force behind an airship. In this article, I have explained the procedure of how these blimps or airships work. On the other hand, some people think that the blimps generate lift just like hot air balloon. However, in reality, blimps are like hot balloons and they use gas for their lift, but the procedure is different from an ordinary air balloon. Somehow, we can relate them with airplanes because they can fly in different weather conditions and they can stay aloft for several days.

A normal blimp consists of many things to help in fly in the air including:

• Envelope

• Nose cone battens

• Aft ballonet

• Forward ballonet

• Catenary curtain

• Flight control surfaces

• Suspension cables

• Engines

• Air scoops

• Helium valve

• Air valves

• Gondola

An envelope is a large bag that contains helium in it, which helps an airship fly. Even in the latest blimps companies have installed lights in which are specifically used for advertisements. Let’s take a look at the procedure of how airships fly in the air.

How an airship flies:

Airships use a combination of different gases in order to get lift. Mostly helium gas is used for this purpose but scientists are working on other gases to use instead of helium gas. However, the advantage of using helium gas is that it contains the capacity of 1.02 kg/m3 that helps an airship to fly easily. In early ages, hydrogen gas was used for lifting purpose, which was cheaper as compared to helium, but after the Hindenburg disaster, the hydrogen was not preferable for airships.

You might have seen an airship lifting heavy material with it because now they are also used for this purpose, but in order to lift these heavy things, normally airships use incredibly large volume of gas.

A blimp works just like the submarines in the water for their take off and landing. An airship contains a ballonet containing heavy air. Helium is a lighter gas so it is used for lifting purpose. Whenever pilots take off an airship, they open the air valves of helium that creates positive buoyancy. Whereas, on the other hand, if pilots have to land an airship they open valves of heavy air that creates negative buoyancy and the airship starts getting down. Similarly, in order to fly an airship at constant speed, pilots have to maintain neutral buoyancy that can be maintained by mixing heavy air and helium. Normally airships can cruise between 1000 ft to 7000 ft. Experts are now working on sophisticated ways for flying the blimp, with special focus on increasing the speed of these airships.