AIRSHIPS AND AEROSTATS TECHNOLOGY. A STATE OF ART REVIEW

摘要

Nowadays new airships or Light than Air (LTA) aircrafts and aerostats are beingrntested and used for military and civilian purposes all over the world. This revivedrninterest about airships and aerostats brings a multitude of new technical conceptsrnresulting from a deep interdisciplinary research so that the actual state of art about themrnpaves the way for renewed horizons regarding its use and operation in the next future.rnWith those technological improvements it is expected that airships will becomernsoon a competitive mean of transport for linkage mainly with areas only served by weakrnor degraded transport infrastructures. Regarding the principles of sustainablerndevelopment of air transport, airships are also the most environmentally friendlyrnvehicles with lower fuel consumption and higher endurance. Therefore they arernconquering new still unexplored markets.rnThis work aims to present a state of art review about history and use of airshipsrnand aerostats, and to evidence how technological improvements in the recent past mayrnimpact positively its performance and thus its use in different scenarios in future.