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Ideas about pressure-strengthened vehicular substructures
By James E. D. ClineVersion 20090628
Abstract:
Low mass, light weight vehicles of adequate functional strength, might be made ofsubstructures strengthened by internal pressure within them, and the sub-sections assembledinto the appropriate shaped full vehicle structures. For ease, imagine soda straw sizedballoons made of pressurized high strength plastic or metal, and the straws all glued togetherto make complicated large shapes such as cars.
Background:
 The use of pressurized shaped structures of vehicles has had a long history.
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Hot air balloons carrying several people in a basket beneath it,
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Lighter than air aircraft such as dirigibles.
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Inflated motorized boats are deployed at sea.
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High altitude balloon platforms are used as launch pads for rockets toward space.
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The large fuel tanks of massive rocket launch vehicles are pressurized so as to haveadequate strength while utilizing relatively thin material for the tanks so as to save on launchvehicle weight to be lifted off the pad.So there is lots of precedent for the use of internal pressure to strengthen and stiffen thestructures of vehicles. Although not built yet, inflated towers of kevlar have been proposed toreach tens of miles high from the ground. Inflated playground structures for children havebeen utilized for many years, that have complex structures and extending tens of feet in alldimensions. And on the science fiction side, the author's novel “It's Down To Earth” freelyavailable here on scribd, includes several such vehicles in it, written in 2007.So a basic idea added here is to creatively build on such precedents to add another partto it, that of building the major part of a general class of vehicles, that are made of pressurizedsubsections to attain complex shaped structures of very low mass for their strength. Suchvehicles could provide interesting new characteristics for transportation.
 
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For one example if automobile unitized bodies were made of pressurized kevlar, andrequiring a comparable low weight motor and small fuel tank to match the low fuelconsumption; and in collision, there would be much less kinetic energy delivered to thevehicles involved, as well as energy absorbed by the pressurized subsections, that safetywould be greatly enhanced, assuming all vehicles on that road were of the same construction.
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Another example would be for high altitude aircraft, what if the structures of aircraft werebuilt hollow of carbon fiber composites that were pressurized inside, to make ultra-lightweightshell structure sections for aircraft, shaped to match the configuration of the aircraft.
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Commercial jet airliners could take on a new category of low airframe mass that has to besupported by the flow of air across the wings, and thus much higher fuel efficiency andoptions for flight.
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Another example is lighter than air vehicles, using hollow pressurized shell structures thatenclose areas filled with helium or, even hydrogen with adequate precautions, to make theoverall structure of neutral buoyancy at high altitude; such structures could be made in theshape of swept back wing jet aircraft too, able to attain long duration flights at speeds of mach0.8; and with neutral buoyancy, such aircraft could turn off their engines and just drift with thewind, perhaps use the high altitude jet streams for even greater efficiency carrying freight, andrestart its jet engines to break free of the jet stream when resuming under its own powertoward its destination.Although much R&D remain for such vehicles, such as ways to monitor the internalpressure of all the subsection structures, and shape fabrication and means of pressurizing thehollow structures, a lot of technology is already in existence for such vehicular structures, andmainly need design for their revised configurations.Some ideas for variations come to mind when viewing these pressurized shapedstructures as of the more general class of pre-stressed structures, which include pre-stressedconcrete bridge and building structures, for example.
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Thus one then could consider such things as closed cell foamed aluminum castings made athigh pressure, so that when released from the mold, it would have a high distributed internalpre-stressed load bearing capacity, useful for perhaps aircraft wings made much like injectionmolded model aircraft parts; the cast wing could have embedded parts such as solid ribs, andcontrol lines both hydraulic and electrical, embedded bearing connectors for flaps, all cast inplace when the molten aluminum is foamed into the mold to cast the wing.
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Possibly low temperature fiber reinforced epoxy could be foamed into castings of some
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