CFD Analysis of Thermal Effects on Zero Pressure Balloon Altitude

Using CFD to analyze thermal and optical
influence on a zero pressure balloon at

floating condition
Anton Fritz
Yared Woldu
Space Engineering, master's level

2018
Luleå University of Technology

Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering
L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY
M ASTER T HESIS
D EPARTMENT OF S YSTEM - AND S PACE TECHNOLOGY
Using CFD to analyze thermal and optical

influence on a zero pressure balloon at
floating condition
Authors:
Anton Fritz anofir-3@student.ltu.se
Yared Woldu yarwol-3@student.ltu.se
Examiner:
Lars-Göran Westerberg Lars-Goran.Westerberg@ltu.se
Supervisors:
Anders Andersson Anders.g.Andersson@ltu.se
Kent Andersson Kent.Andersson@sscspace.com
June 3, 2018
Luleå University of Technology
ABSTRACT
The ability to control the trajectory and understanding the atmospheric effects on the
flight performance of a scientific high altitude balloon has long been an aspiring ambi-
tion. This thesis work analyses the thermal and optical environments at float using the
simulation software, ANSYS FLUENT. The objectives for this thesis were to evaluate
how the solar angle, sunshine factor and the ground emissivity altered the altitude for
the balloon during floating condition in Steady-state simulations. A transient simula-
tion was conducted to evaluate the diurnal cycle effects on the altitude of the balloon.
The understanding of how the parameters influence the altitude will make it possible
to autonomously route the balloon to desired altitudes where you have a favourable
wind direction.
Performing steady state simulations showcased the significance of certain parameters.
Different solar angles greatly influenced the temperature gradient on the balloon and
hence a larger lifting force acted on the balloon when the sun was at its highest point.
Varying the cloudiness mostly affected the maximum temperature distribution and
did not affect the minimum temperature distribution. The steady state simulations
also indicated a limited but noticeable dependence on the ground emissivity. From the
transient simulations it was further enhanced how great of influence the solar angle
have, which was illustrated by running diurnal cycles. It was also apparent that there
are great differences depending on the seasons. For future applications, it would be of
interest to investigate the effects caused by wind velocities in the steady-state case. A
comparative analytic solution should be performed in order to validate the simulation
results.
- ii -
Contents
Abstract ii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Outline of Thesis Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 Theory 3
2.1 Governing equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.1 Thermal governing equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.2 Fluid governing equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Thermal models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.1 Solar radiation models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.2 Infrared radiation models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.3 Conduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.4 Convection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.1 Turbulence model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.2 Wall treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4 Solar Load Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.1 Solar Ray Tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.2 Shading Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4.3 Drawbacks of using Solar Load Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3 Method 25
3.1 The balloon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 Model Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.2.1 Creating the balloon geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.2.2 Setting up the mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.3 FLUENT setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.2.4 Steady-state setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2.5 Transient setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.2.6 Setup for spherical balloon simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4 Results 46
4.1 Steady State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.2 Transient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.2.1 Zero-pressure balloon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.2.2 Spherical model balloon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5 Discussion and Evaluation 64

5.1 Steady State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2 Transient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.3 Spherical balloon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6 Conclusion 67
6.1 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
References 69
List of figures 70
Appendices 71
A UDF for wall heat generation rate for spherical balloon 71
B UDF for wall heat generation rate for zero pressure balloon 72
1. INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction
For several centuries, space flight and space explorations have defined the foundation
of how space experiments are conducted. Different types of vehicles are used depending
on the objectives of the mission. The vehicles in question can be manned or unmanned.
With this in consideration, the vehicle used must be modified to suit the lives of the
passengers. Rocket vessels are usually the choice of vehicle to transport people to and
from the International Space Station (ISS) and interstellar missions.
However, rocket propelled vessels are not feasible for conducting experiments within
the upper boundary of the stratospheric layer and the surface of the Earth. For this
purpose, Stratospheric balloons will better suit the mission. Stratospheric balloons,
which also goes by the name High-altitude balloons, are frequently being used for these
missions. The most common application for the high-altitude balloons are weather bal-
loons. The balloon have a floating altitude at 18000-37000 meters, depending on the
size of the balloon. The balloons are usually filled with Helium or Hydrogen which
allows them to climb in altitude since Helium and Hydrogen are lighter than atmo-
spheric air. The lifting force produced from the weight difference of the gases is being
reduced with altitude. A balloon of a certain size could take you to the edge of space.
This definition comes from the limiting altitude where a human being won’t survive
without a pressurized suit.
Flying stratospheric balloons in order to conduct experiments for educational pur-
poses has vastly been increased until this day. The reason for why these balloons are of
such popularity is due to the low cost and the ability to launch a balloon without a lot of
resources. An increase of larger stratospheric balloons have also been seen in the last
10-20 years. The atmosphere at an altitude close to 30 km resembles the atmosphere
at mars close to the surface. Mars is a popular ground for experimental purposes and
if such an experiment can be conducted on Earth, reducing cost to fly the experiment
over to mars, makes it appealing.
However, one major issue with flying such a balloon is that you cannot control the
direction of flight. This does not impose a major collision risk issue due to the low
speeds, but it may inflict complications with the recovery of the experiment after the
Page 1 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

1. INTRODUCTION
flight is completed. It is difficult to recover an experiment that has landed far out into
the sea or at a mountain peak. This analysis will evaluate effects on the balloon caused
by surrounding physical factors. The results will then be further used to develop an
autonomous navigation system for high altitude balloons.
1.1 Previous Work
Using ANSYS Fluent and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in order to investi-
gate the effects from the solar load on high altitude scientific balloons with the help
of FLUENTs solar load model, has not been done before by any papers known to the
authors. Researching the thermal and optical influences on the reign lift force for a
zero pressure balloon using CFD can be considered a novel approach since it has not
been extensively covered. However, there are some previous work done which uses
numerical methods to solve similar problems with the help of ANSYS FLUENT. In the
work performed by Zhao et al. [4], an airships steady thermal performance was an-
alyzed using numerical methods based on the thermal conditions in the atmosphere.
They also simulated the temperature distribution on a spherical shaped balloon using
ANSYS FLUENT and studied the temperature variation during the diurnal cycle.
In the work done by Liu et al. [5] a dynamic model was solved numerically with
the help of Matlab/Simulink in order to calculate the velocity and trajectory for a high
attitude scientific balloon. They later simulated the thermal model with the help of
ANSYS Fluent to find the temperature distribution on the skin as well as determining
the inner Helium gas velocity and temperature fields.
1.2 Outline of Thesis Work
Autonomous Navigation System for High Altitude Balloons (ANSHAB), is the name
of the project that this thesis work is based on. The project is run by Esrange (SSC),
which is the most northern launch site in the world. The aim of the project is to produce
a system that can predict the trajectory of the balloon with much higher accuracy. For
this to be done, you have to understand the physical, thermal and optical factors that
affects the flight of the balloon. This master thesis will cover some aspects of this major

2. THEORY
project. The outline for this thesis work is to analyze and simulate how the altitude of
the balloon is affected with respect to solar radiation, albedo radiation and convection
inside the balloon. The model must be able to consider weather conditions, such as
cloudiness etc. and also be able to consider different types of ground surfaces (Ice-
sheet, forest, snow, desert etc). The model will be built and configured using ANSYS
FLUENT.
2 Theory
The conditions and properties of the atmosphere play a vital role in conducting this
research. The atmosphere can be imagined as a thin sheet wrapped around a football.
That is the thickness of the atmosphere until outer space is reached. Within this thin
film of air surrounding the Earth, many different chemical, thermodynamic and fluid
dynamical effects occur.
Air density, pressure and temperature are the most important properties that need
to be considered in order to conduct this research. The effects of these properties have
a significant impact on the flight-performance of the balloon. However, these prop-
erties are not spread uniformly throughout the atmosphere. Therefore, appropriate
assumptions was made in order to construct a model suitable for simulation purposes.
The assumptions include the temperature and pressure gradients and how they are
changing with altitude. These reads:
  
T 15.04 − 0.00649 · h

if 0 ≤ h < 11000 m
 = (1)
p 101.29 · ¡ T +273.1 ¢5.256

288.08
  
T −54.46◦ C

 = (2)
p 22.65 · e1.73−0.000157·h

if 11000 ≤ h < 25000 m
  
T −131.21 + 0.00299 · h

 = (3)
p 2.488 · ¡ T +273.1 ¢−11.3883

if 25000 ≤ h m.
216.6

2. THEORY
The Eqs. 1, 2 and 3 describes the relationship of how the temperature and pressure
gradients changes with altitude, and the equations represent an atmospheric model of
these two properties. NASA uses the same model since the results yielded when the
assumed model is applied, have rather low uncertainty and it also makes it easier to
perform calculations with atmospheric parameters. The model is based on many dif-
ferent assumptions and the surface temperature parameter can be changed depending
on the geographic location on Earth. The values in the assumptions are average values
of the global surface temperature and global surface pressure [6].
The pressure is decreasing with altitude at all times, but that is not the case for the
temperature. As mentioned above, the atmosphere is very complex and the reason for
why the lapse rate is shifting sign is due to many different atmospheric variables and
also due to the fact that as the atmosphere extends upwards, the constituents of the
atmosphere change. This behaviour is illustrated in the figure below.
Figure 1: Pressure and temperature estimation depending on the altitude of the strato-
spheric balloon. Credit: [15].

2. THEORY
2.1 Governing equations
2.1.1 Thermal governing equations
The thermal environment at high altitudes are rather complicated and is changing de-
pending on what kind of weather it is, the geographic location and it is also slightly
changing with time. The heat interchange between the ambient air, the balloon skin
and the helium gas can be divided into two factors, external and internal. The balloon
is exposed to a thermal environment from external components that interacts with
the balloon skin. These external factors consist of several components that includes
solar radiation, infrared radiation and convection. In turn, the solar radiation can be
stripped down to three parts. Direct solar radiation, on a clear day comprise 80 % of the
radiation energy. Direct solar radiation can be called beam radiation and is the solar
rays that travels in a straight line without molecular interference in the atmosphere.
Diffuse radiation on the other hand, is the sunlight that has been scattered in the at-
mosphere by molecules and, on a clear day, comprise 15 % of the solar radiation energy.
Lastly, the reflective radiation is considered. The reflective radiation originates from
solar rays bouncing of the surface of the Earth. The amount of reflected solar energy
of the ground depend on what type of surface it is. Asphalt reflects roughly 4 %, while
a grass field reflects about 25 % of the solar radiation. These different solar reflection
factors will be varied in the model, simulating different weather conditions, the type
of surface directly under the high altitude balloon and the solar angle to vary the ratio
between direct and diffuse solar radiation.
The second contributing external factor is the IR radiation emitted by the Earth’s sur-
face and the atmosphere. On the wavelength spectrum, infrared radiation has a longer
wavelength compared to the wavelengths of visible light. Roughly 35 % of the sunlight
on average is reflected on the surface of the Earth into the atmosphere. The reflected
radiation can eventually get diffused when ascending up into space, but the majority
of the incident rays will be considered to be direct radiation with dissipated energy due
to losses during the way. The incident solar irradiation interacts with large particles
in the atmosphere such as aerosols, and as a result of this interaction, the atmosphere

2. THEORY
is heated. The generated heat is transferred over to the skin of the balloon, heating
the lifting gas as a result. [7]
An internal factor that is heavily considered in the model is the natural convection
due to an imbalance in density caused by temperature fluctuations within the domain.
The lifting gas in the closed domain will get heated by the external factors which will
cause the gas to thermally expand and become less dense. When partial areas of the
gas expands thermally and becomes less dense, that partial area will rise within the
domain since it has a lower density compared to the surrounding gas. The process of
natural convection is mostly driven by temperature factors.
This can be expressed mathematically on the skin of the envelope. If the balloon
skin is divided into N number of rectangular elements that covers the entire balloon,
a thermal balance equation can be assumed. If energy conservation is assumed, Eq. 4
suffers no losses and should equate to zero for each element (i) such that
Q s,i + Q IR,i + Q c,i + Q con,i = 0, (4)
Where the Q-terms refers to either absorbed or emitted energy from the different com-
ponents. What the Different Q-terms represents is described in table 1
Q s,i Solar radiation

Q IR,i IR-radiation
Q c,i Scattered radiation
Q con,i Convective heat
Table 1: Description of what the different heat contributions are.
2.1.2 Fluid governing equations
The buoyancy flow of the gas is driven by temperature gradients and local density
changes as mentioned above. The complex thermal environment at high altitudes may
induce large temperature variations on the balloon skin of up to 80◦ . The local changes
of density within the fluid domain varies ever so slightly that you could think of ne-

2. THEORY
glecting it. Even though the changes are so small, it is enough to drive a convective
flow within the domain and the motion can be approximated using Boussinesq model
in FLUENT. Boussinesq approximation utilizes the difference in temperature to drive
a flow and allow heat transfer. The model assumes that mass, momentum and energy
is conserved, i.e.
∂ρ
+ ∇ · (ρ u) = 0. (5)
∂t
The Boussinesq model assumes that the density is the only parameter that is time
dependent. The density will follow the equations if it is multiplied with gravity. For an
incompressible fluid, i.e. where the density is constant Eq. 5 is reduced to
∇ · u = 0. (6)
The Navier-Stokes equations is used as the general expression for conservation of

momentum. The flow needs to consider a Newtonian fluid and the fluid is considered
to be in-compressible. The flow can be considered in-compressible since the pressure
difference between the helium domain and the surrounding atmosphere are relatively
small. Also, the velocities in the helium domain is rather low. For an incompressible
fluid the Navier-Stokes equation reads
∂u 1 1
+ u · ∇u = − ∇p + ν∇2 u + F, (7)
∂t ρ ρ
where ν is the kinematic viscosity and F represents the acting body forces. The model
assumes linear dependency of temperature, and if the gravitational force is the only
acting body force, the conserved equation for energy is expressed as below
ρ = ρ 0 − αρ 0 ∆T.
Replacing F from Eq 7 with ρ g gives
∂u 1
+ u · ∇u = − ∇p + ν∇2 u − gα∆T. (8)
∂t ρ

2. THEORY
The heat capacity (ρ C ρ ) is assumed to be constant which leads to
∂T J
+ u · ∇T = κ∇2 T + . (9)
∂t ρ Cρ
The paramaneters in the aforementioned equations are described in table 2.
u Velocity of Helium
ν Kinematic viscosity
κ Thermal diffusivity
α Thermal expansion coefficient
J Rate of internal heat production per
unit volume
Cν Specific heat at constant volume
qH e Source energy, originates from convec-
tion with the skin
Table 2: Description of variables in the governing fluid equations.
The Eqs. 6, 8 and 9 are the basic equations needed to make the Boussinesq ap-
proximation. With this approximation in mind, the three governing equation for mass,
energy and momentum are stated below.
If the lifting gas is treated as an ideal gas, many of the equation can be simplified.
Pressure, temperature and density becomes interlinked with the assumption
p he = ρ he R he T he . (10)
The gas constant, R, is 2077 J /(k g·K) for Helium. If the aforementioned properties
are conserved and true, the following equations are valid.
Mass:
∇ρ he uhe = 0. (11)
Momentum:
1
uhe · ∇uhe = −1 P he . (12)
ρ he

2. THEORY
Energy:
u2he
Ã !
1
uhe · ∇ C ν T he + =− ∇ · (ρ he uhe ) + q he . (13)
2 ρ he
2.2 Thermal models
The different solar contribution have been mentioned above in the "thermal governing
equations" section. The thermal models covers all the contributions originating from
the Solar and Earth energy. The solar load model in ANSYS FLUENT is used through-
out the simulation because it simulates and tracks the position of the sun in real time.
Beside the largest contributor, the sun and the Earth, the conduction on the skin and
convection will be further discussed in this section. All of the different contributing
components is illustrated in figure 2
Figure 2: Radiation loads on the balloon contributed by the solar flux and infrared
radiation. Credit: [9].
2.2.1 Solar radiation models
Solar radiation is broken down to three parts. Direct, diffuse and albedo. The compo-
nents originates from the solar flux but carry different energies and intensities. The

2. THEORY
solar load model in FLUENT resembles the position, distance and intensities of all the
solar components. The model allows the user to scale the intensities and alter prop-
erties of the desired material. The model is very sophisticated since it considers the
irradiation directly normal to the irradiated surface as well as the incident radiation
with an angle to the irradiated surface and assign intensities accordingly. The direct
solar radiation can be expressed as
n
I direct = I 0 d 2m τatm . (14)
n
In Eq 14, I 0 represents the average solar intensity per quadratic meter. τatm rep-
resents the transmittance of the atmosphere. The exponent, n, can be described by the
equation below
1 P atm
n= , (15)
cos β + 0.15(93.885 − β)−1.253 101325
where β is the zenith angle. The analysis is done at the same altitude, which implies
n
that the pressure is constant. Therefore, the value of τatm is constant.
The intensity of the solar radiation dissipates with distance due to interference in
the atmosphere. This is corrected with the term ( d 2m ). The correction term is expressed
with the solar day angle and the zenith angle as well as other terms described in table
3:
d m = 1.00110 + 0.03422 cos γ + 0.001280 sin γ + 0.000719 cos 2γ + 0.000077 sin 2γ. (16)

2. THEORY
γ Solar day angle

β Zenith angle
ϕ local latitude
ξ Solar declination angle
ω Solar hour angle
χ Sky clearness factor (0.18∼ clear, 0.57∼
cloudy)
ψ Solar azimuth angle
Table 3: Description of variables.
The contributed radiation flux from the diffuse component is directly related to the
direct solar flux. The diffuse radiation flux is given with the following formula:
n n
I 0 τatm (1 − τatm )
I di f f use = . (17)
2(1 − 1.4 ln (τatm ))
The equation for the albedo radiation flux is rather simple since it is assumed that
the surface of the Earth only reflects the direct solar radiation flux and not the diffuse
radiation flux. The albedo radiation flux is scaled with a coefficient which is determined
based on the weather conditions described as:
I albedo = χ · I direct . (18)
The heat transferred into the lifting gas from the solar flux can thus be determined
with the equations described above, i.e. Eq:s 14, 17 and 18. However, there exist a vast
spectrum of solar rays that hit the surface of the balloon at an angle. The radiation
intensity must be scaled accordingly to acquire accurate theoretical results. Since light
travels in a straight line, surfaces behind the incident surface will not be exposed to
the solar flux. The hidden surfaces will be in the shadow region, and not receive as
much radiation flux as the irradiated surface on the other side. A function, denoted
(λ(ns ,n i )) is used to calculate the direction of the incident solar flux and also consider
the surfaces in the shadow region. The direction of the solar radiation is denoted (ns )
and the magnitude of the direction is |ns | = 1 since the direction vector consists of

2. THEORY
spherical coordinates. Spherical coordinates are preferred for the geometry used in the
model. This is part of the numerical way to solve the heat transfer equations. This
relation is depicted in figure 3:
Figure 3: Describing the incident solar radiation at an angle with normal vectors.
Credit: [4].
The criteria for determining if a surface element is illuminated or not can be deter-
mined using the normal vector from the surface element outwards. (n i , |n i | = 1), where
π
i is the i:th surface element, must satisfy the condition 2 < θ i ≤ π. If the i:th element
is in the interval: 0 ≤ θ i ≤ π2 , the element is in the shadow region and the direct solar
flux will be greatly reduced, if not even zero. The direction of solar radiation can be
determined using the following equation:
ns = − cos β · cos ψ · i − cos β · sin ψ · j − sin β · k. (19)
The solar azimuth angle (ψ) is calculated using the following equation:
sin β · sin φ − sin δ

ψ = arccos . (20)
cos β · cos ϕ

2. THEORY
Figure 4: The involved angles is illustrated with this figure. Credit:[10].
With the aforementioned equations in mind, the lambda function can be defined.
The purpose of the function is to determine if a surface element is illuminated or not.
The values the function can achieve is either a 1 or a 0, i.e:
|n s · n i | − n s · n i
λ(ns ,n i ) = . (21)
2| n s · n i |
The result of Eq. 21 is

0 if 0 ≤ θ i ≤ π2 .

λ(ns ,ni ) = (22)
π
1 if < θ i ≤ π.

2
The lambda function will equate to zero if the surface element is in the shadow re-
gion and equate to 1 if the element is illuminated by the solar rays. Knowing the solar
intensity and the components that comes with the solar flux, and knowing the exact
amount of surface elements illuminated by the solar rays, it is possible to determine
the different heat contributions on the whole surface of the domain. The total heat
contribution in a surface element originates from the direct solar flux, incident albedo
radiation flux and the diffuse solar radiation flux. These equations have been stated

2. THEORY
above but with the new shadow parameter, the equations can be expressed as below:
Q direct,i = λ(ns ,n i )|ns · n i |αs A i I direct , (23)
Q albedo,i = λ(n g ,n i )|n g · n i |αs A i I albedo , (24)
Q di f f use,i = αs A i I di f f use . (25)
Hence, the total contribution in a surface element is
Q s,i = Q direct,i + Q albedo,i + Q di f f use,i . (26)
2.2.2 Infrared radiation models
Infrared radiation have longer wavelengths than visible light and infrared radiation
is a large contributing factor on the heat transferred to the balloon through the skin,
especially during the night when the balloon is not illuminated by the sun. Infrared
radiation is emitted from the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere. In reality, the
skin of the balloon do also emit infrared radiation after absorbing energy from the
solar flux. This contributing factor will not participate in the calculation since there is
not enough information available on the material regarding absorptivity, transmitivity
and reflectivity. The thickness of the envelope is very small in regards to the size of the
fully inflated balloon, which implies that the total contribution will be small enough to
be neglected without suffering poor results.
The heat equations for the infrared radiation is similar to the solar radiation equa-
tion and the shadow equation (Eq. 21) is used in the same manner as in the previous
case. Since the shadow equation is implemented, the infrared heat contribution will
be discussed using surface elements (i). As the solar flux strikes the ground during the
day, the ground absorbs the energy and re-emits some of the energy in form of infrared
radiation. The amount of energy radiated from the ground is given with the equation

2. THEORY
below:
Q IR ground,i = λ(n g ,n i )|n g · n i |α IR A i I ground , (27)
the radiation flux is given by the following formula:
I IR ground = τ IR,atm · ε ground · σ · T 4ground . (28)
The temperature on ground is 288.19◦ K and is determined by using the standard

atmospheric temperatures and pressure given by Eqs. 1, 2 and 3.
One of the varying components in this analysis is the ground emissivity (ε ground ).
The effectiveness of a type of surface to emit energy is given with this variable and it
varies lightly depending on the surface directly underneath the balloon. Some of the
ground surfaces the analysis will contain is oceans, narrow forests, snow/ice sheets,
deserts and tropical rain-forests. All of these have different ε ground values as can be
seen in table 4 below:
Ground Surface Emissivity (ε ground )

Asphalt 0.88
Ice 0.97
Snow 0.80
Water 0.96
Desert 0.76
Frozen soil 0.93
Table 4: Earth emissivities for a variety of ground surfaces. Credit: [11].
τ IR,atm is the transmissivity of air. Since the density of air within the atmosphere is
varying heavily, the transmissivity of air can be expressed with the following equation:
P air P air
µ ¶
−0.65 −0.95
τ IR,atm = 1.716 − 0.5 · e P0
+e P0
, (29)
where P0 and P air are the pressure on ground level respectively the pressure on the
balloons current altitude.

2. THEORY
The infrared radiation contribution from the atmosphere depends on the tempera-
ture of the infrared irradiated flux of the ambient air in the atmosphere. The atmo-
sphere can be treated as a black body for simplicity in order to utilize Stefan Boltz-
mann’s law. The radiation temperature is given with the following equation:
1.5
T b = 0.052 · T atm , (30)
where T atm is the ambient temperature at the current altitude. Using the radiation
temperature T b , the heat contribution of the atmosphere can be expressed as
Q IRair,i = εskin A i σT b4 . (31)
The total heat transferred to the balloon can be expressed as
Q IR,i = Q IR ground,i + Q IRair + Q IRskin,i − Q IRout . (32)
The contributions from the last two terms in Eq. 32 is neglected due to insufficient
information on the properties of the material of the balloon. The transmissivity is
assumed to be zero, with this assumption in mind, the equation breaks down to
Q IR,i = Q IR ground,i + Q IRair . (33)
2.2.3 Conduction
The internal energy of the skin is transferred to the neighbor elements through a pro-
cess called thermal conduction. The thermal conduction of the skin can be expressed
by Eq. 34, and this process gives rise to the temperature balance of the skin:
n
X ti − t j
Q con,i = kδ l j . (34)
j =1 dj

2. THEORY
Figure 5: Illustrates the conduction in the skin from T2 → T1 , where T ib is the ambient
temperature and T a > T ib . Credit: [16].
The equation models heat transfer through conduction in the skin with an element
(i) and its adjacent elements. δ is the thickness of the element, l j is the length of the
shared surface element and the distance between the center of the elements is repre-
sented with the variable d j . It is known that the material is a polyethylene mixture,
but the suppliers did not expose the constituents and the properties of the material.
In this analysis, High-density Polyethylene (HDPE) was assumed. With the material
assumption, the conductivity of the material is known. The conductivity of HDPE is
W
0. 4 m· K .
2.2.4 Convection
The heat exchange in form of convection exists in two parts. The external convection
involves the ambient air and the exterior walls of the balloon. Both forced and free
convection exists on the exterior walls. The second part is the convection involvement
between the interior wall of the balloon and the lifting gas. The external convection
heat, both free and forced, can be expressed as

Q f ree,i = H f ree,i A i (T a − T i )

Free External
(35)
Q
f orced,i = H f orced,i A i (T a − T i ) Forced External.


2. THEORY
H in Eq. 35 is the convection heat transfer coefficient. The coefficient is calculated

differently between the forced and the free convection. It can be expressed as

 H f ree,i k air 0.55
= 2R (2 + 0.41 · R e ),

(36)
H N u· k air
= 2R .

f orced,i
The internal convection is calculated in a similar manner. The temperature of the

lifting gas is considered instead of the ambient air:
Q f ree,i = H f ree,i A i (T H e − T i ) Free Internal, (37)
where T i is the temperature of the surface element for the interior skin wall while
T H e is the temperature of the lifting gas adjacent to the interior wall. k H e , µH e and
P r H e is the thermal conductivity coefficient, the dynamic viscosity and the Prandtl
number of the lifting gas respectively. The parameters are needed to find the value
for the internal convective heat transfer coefficient ( H f ree,i ). The parameters can be
expressed with the following set of equations:

T H e 0.7
³ ´
kH e = 0.144 ·


273.15




 P rHe = 0.729 − 1.6 · 10−4 · T H e (38)

YH e 0.647
 ³ ´
µ H e = 1.895 · 10−5 · 273.15

.

With the parameters defined in Eq. 38, the internal convective heat transfer coefficient
is expressed as
!1
ρ 2H e · g · |T i − T H e | · P r H e
Ã
3
H f ree = 0.13 · k H e · . (39)

T H e · µ2H e

2. THEORY
Figure 6: Heat contributions from solar flux, infrared radiation, conduction and con-
vection. Credit: [5].
With all the aforementioned equations, it is possible to solve for the total heat con-
tribution from convection. The contribution from the forced and free convection on the
exterior wall together with the contribution from the internal wall yields the following
expression:
Q con,i = Q E X f ree,i + Q E X f orced,i + Q I N f ree,i . (40)
2.3 Turbulence
Determining if a fluid flow is turbulent or laminar is dependent on the so called Reynolds

number. The Reynolds number is defined as
UL
Re = , (41)
ν
where we have the description of the ratio between the characteristic scales, velocity
(U), Length (L), and the kinematic viscosity (ν). Typically a Reynolds number between
2000 to 5000 indicates that the flow is in transition, while if the Reynolds number of
the flow is larger than 5000 it is considered to be a turbulent flow. For this problem,

2. THEORY
the Reynolds number will be in the region between 2500 and up to 70 000 indicating
that a turbulence model is needed.
It’s commonly possibly to characterize a turbulent flow with the help of Reynolds
decomposition. This is done by including a turbulent fluctuating part to the velocity
and pressure. Due to the fluctuations with time we end up with the following equation
for the velocity and pressure:

 u i = U i + u0

i
(42)
 p = P + p0 ,

where the first term is a mean part and the second term represents a fluctuating part.
By utilizing Eq. 42 above it’s possible to obtain the RANS equation which indicates
the Reynolds average Navier Stokes equations. From Eq. 6 and 7 from the governing
equations section, it is thus possible to reformulate the continuity and momentum
equations accordingly:



U i,i = 0

 u0 = 0


i,i
(43)
0 0
∂( u i u j )

∂

U 1

i

U j = − P,i + F i + νU i, j j − .


∂x j ρ ∂x j
2.3.1 Turbulence model
In this thesis the realizable k-epsilon model was chosen. Being one of the most used
models, it includes two extra transport equations in order to represent the turbulent
properties of the flow. It follows that the model take the historical effects, such as
diffusion and convection, into consideration of the turbulent energy.
The k in the model-name stands for turbulent kinetic energy, and it determines the
energy in the turbulence. The second variable being transported, ², is the turbulent
dissipation which in turn decides the scale of the turbulence. [2].
By utilizing the RANS equations you can use the best available computing ap-
proach, in an economical aspect, in order to achieve good results while calculating
complex turbulent industrial flows as indicated by ANSYS fluent manual [1]. This is

2. THEORY
exactly what the k-epsilon model is doing. The model also introduces an Eddy-Viscosity
in order to perform calculations for the Reynold stresses.
The k-epsilon model is assumed to be good for free-shear layer flows with relatively
small pressure gradients. It is also considered to generate good results when the mean
pressure gradients are small for cases with a wall-bounded internal flow [2].
The transport equations is defined below:
∂ ∂ ∂ µt ∂k
·µ ¶ ¸
(ρ k) + (ρ ku j ) = µ+ + P k + P b − ρ² − YM + S k . (44)
∂t ∂x j ∂x j σk ∂ x j
∂ ∂ ∂ µ t ∂² ²2 ²
·µ ¶ ¸
(ρ²) + (ρ² u j ) = µ+ + ρ C1 S ² − ρ C2 p + C 1² C 3² P b + S ² . (45)
∂t ∂x j ∂x j σ² ∂ x j k + ν² k
In Eq. 44 P k represents the generation of turbulent kinetic energy due to the mean
velocity gradient and P b is the generation of turbulent kinetic energy due to buoyancy.
Eq. 45 yields the following definitions:
η
 · ¸
C 1 = max 0.43,


η+5





k (46)
η=S
q²





S = 2S S .

ij ij
The Eddy-Viscosity is related to the two equations in the k-epsilon model by the
following equation:
k2
µt = ρ Cµ , (47)
²
where the k-epsilon Realizable model differs from the standard k-epsilon model in two
ways. The realizable model uses a variable for the turbulent viscosity, C µ, which dif-
fers from the constant value used in the standard model. The realizable model also
uses another transport equation for the dissipation rate, which comes from an exact
equation for the transport of the mean-square vorticity fluctuation. This means it will
generate better results for the spreading rate of jets. Other improved areas involve
flows with rotation, boundary layers under strong adverse pressure gradients, separa-
tion and re-circulation.

2. THEORY
2.3.2 Wall treatment
In the case of boundary layers close to the walls, it is of great importance to capture
what is happening in the area. By using different wall functions close to the walls it
is possible to capture the effects of big differences in, for example the temperature and
velocity gradients, which often occurs close to the walls with no-slip conditions.
To capture the effects in the boundary layers, a common method is to implement
inflation layers at the walls. This implies that the mesh quality close to the walls will
be much higher in comparison with the center areas. This is done in order to capture
the progress of the exchange of energy through the wall.
2.4 Solar Load Model
ANSYS FLUENT version 19.0 was used in this thesis work. By using the provided
solar load model from FLUENT, it was possible to calculate the radiation effects from
the sun acting on a specified computational domain. This thesis takes the ray tracing
approach into consideration. By utilizing this method it was possible to apply solar
load as a heat source in the energy equation. The handy part with the solar load
model is that FLUENT provides the user with a solar calculator. This utility can be
used in order to construct the sun’s location in the sky for any given time of the day.
This includes the date and geographical position. The solar load model works with
3D-simulations and can be used to solve both steady and unsteady flows.
2.4.1 Solar Ray Tracing
By setting the position of the sun as well as the solar intensity in the form of direct and
diffuse solar irradiation, it is possible to define the solar load. By tracking all the solar
rays it is also possible to perform a shading analysis to see the shaded areas on the
boundary faces. In this way the solar ray tracing algorithm calculates the heat flux on
the models boundary faces and can be coupled to FLUENT calculation with the help of
utilizing a source term in the energy equation [1].
Heat sources are added directly to computational cells which are neighboring each
face and are assigned to the adjacent cells. FLUENT gives the user a choice of setting

2. THEORY
constant values for the direct and diffuse solar irradiation as well as letting the solar
calculator find these values. Another way is to use user defined functions (UDF) or, in
the case of a transient solution, use a polynomial or linear function.
By using the solar ray tracing alternative it is possible to account for effects from
both direct solar illumination and diffuse solar radiation in Fluent. The model uses a
two-band spectral model for direct solar illumination and take the effects for separate
material properties in the visible and infrared bands into consideration. For the diffuse
radiation, a single-band hemispherical-averaged spectral model is employed [1].
Depending on the material used in the model there are different parameters to set.
For opaque materials the user must set absorptivites for the two-band spectrum. If the
material is semi-transparent (ex glass) then the model demands data of transmissivity
and absorptivity. These values is to be defined for normal incident rays since FLUENT
itself interpolates these data values for the given angle of incidence and thus, it gets
the correct solar angle.
The algorithm also considers the internal scattered and diffusive loading. The part
of the direct solar irradiation that is being reflected is tracked by FLUENT. Some parts
of this internally scattered energy is applied by weighing the area for all participat-
ing surfaces in the solar load calculation. It is the scattering fraction that affect the
internally scattered energy. Scattering fraction is defined by the user with the help of
the Text User Interface (TUI). By default, this value is specified to 1. The scattering
fraction can have a big impact on the inclusion/exclusion of large amounts of radiation
within the domain depending on what the reflectivity of the primary surface is [1].
The internally scattered energy will also contain the eventual contribution, enter-
ing through the semi-transparent walls, from the transmitted energy coming from the
diffuse solar irradiation. This will come from the hemispherical transmissivity. The to-
tal value of internally scattered energy is displayed in the FLUENT console. The solar
calculator can therefore calculate the ambient flux by dividing the internally scattered
energy with the total surface area of the participating faces [1].

2. THEORY
2.4.2 Shading Algorithm
The solar load model comes with a built in shading algorithm aimed at determining
where the shadowed areas occur for certain positions of the sun relative to the geometry
in the model. The algorithm traces a ray from the centroid of a test face in the suns
direction. All faces are controlled in order to find any intersections with the ray and
to determine if the section face is in front of the test face. Depending on whether both
conditions are fulfilled, an opaque face completely shades the test face. If there is a
semi-transparent face it means that the incident energy will be attenuated [1].
In order to reduce computation time, a quad-tree pre-processing step is included
in the ray tracing algorithm. If there exists more than 10000 faces the computational
time might get high. This refinement factor can be modified with the TUI. The default
values is set to 7 and works fine for mesh sizes between one and five million cells. If
there is more cells it is preferable to increase the refinement factor in order to reduce
the computational time for the solar load calculator [1].
2.4.3 Drawbacks of using Solar Load Model
One major drawback with the solar load model is the fact that it is not fully developed
to work with models that are at altitudes. The model does not include the IR radiation
from the earth or the atmosphere. The intended use for the solar load model seems
to be on ground level where it is possible to use it together with one of the radiation
models available in FLUENT. Since the solar load model is not a participating radiation
model, it mean that it does not handle emission from surfaces. This is something that
can be implemented with the help of one of the included radiation models such as STS
or P-1.
Since it is rather difficult to implement a radiation model from surfaces distanced
by about 30 km in ANSYS another approach had to be used in order to model the
IR radiation from the earth and atmosphere acting on the balloon (See the method
section).

3. METHOD
3 Method
3.1 The balloon
High-altitude balloons comes in many different types. The flight characteristics of

the different types of balloons differs and you usually chose a balloon that fits the
criterion’s for the desired mission. The two most common high-altitude balloons are
zero-pressure balloons and super-pressure balloons.
The flight characteristics of a super-pressure balloon is very different from a zero-
pressure balloon. The volume of the lifting gas is kept relatively constant even though
the temperature fluctuates in a 24-hour cycle. This allows the balloon to be very stable
in altitude during the flight. A super-pressure balloon is better suitable for exces-
sive duration of flight in comparison to a zero-pressure balloon. Another difference
is that the weight of the super-pressure balloon is much higher compared to the zero-
pressure balloon since the balloon must sustain the super-pressure. This leads to losses
in altitude and in general zero-pressure balloons reaches higher altitudes than super-
pressure balloons even during the night despite the oscillating behaviour described
below. The zero-pressure balloon varies in volume throughout the flight. During the
highest temperature peak in the diurnal cycle, the lifting gas in the balloon expands.
The expansion causes the gas to displace a greater region, and this will in turn cause
the balloon to climb in altitude as an effect of the increased buoyancy. As the gas ex-
pands and fills up the balloon, some of the gas will escape at the bottom of the balloon
where the pressure is the same as the ambient pressure. At this point, the balloon
will stop its climb in altitude since the gas cannot increase its displacement. During
the coldest temperature in the diurnal cycle, the lifting gas cools down and gets com-
pressed. This will cause the balloon to lose altitude. To counteract the loss of lifting
force, the balloons are equipped with ballasts that can be dropped to lose weight. Since
there are a finite amount of gas and ballasts, the duration of flight for a zero-pressure
balloon is limited.

3. METHOD
Figure 7: Super-pressure balloon. Figure 8: Zero-pressure balloon.

Credit: [12]. Credit: [13].
As mentioned above, the super-pressure balloon can maintain a steady altitude

throughout the flight. The zero-pressure balloon however, fluctuates in altitude due to
the possibility of venting out the gas. This can be illustrated with the figure 9
Figure 9: Comparison in altitude fluctuations for a zero-pressure balloon and a super-

pressure balloon with respect to the diurnal cycle. Credit: [14].
The balloon used for this analysis, is a zero-pressure balloon. A data sheet of the
physical dimensions of the balloon were provided in order for a more accurate simula-
tion. However, some of the optical and thermal properties were classified by the man-

3. METHOD
ufacturer. This caused some uncertainties to grow around the entire analysis. Some
assumptions were made and some comparisons with similar experiments were made
to acquire some of the missing properties. The size of the uninflated balloon stretches
139.556 m in length, and the volume capacity of the balloon is 386490 m3 . The enve-
lope is made up of 118 gores which makes up a surface area of 26134 m2 . The density
of the balloon is unknown. However, the mass of the envelope was given in the data
sheet. The mass of the uninflated balloon is 693.5 k g. The thickness of the envelope
was also known and it was 15 µ m. The volume of the material used can be found and
in turn, the density of the material can be obtained. The volume is solved as
Venv = A env · d env = 26134 · 1.5 · 10−5 = 0.3918 m3 , (48)
where A env is the surface area and d env is the thickness of the envelope. With a volume
of 0.3918 m3 and a mass of 693.5 kg, the density can be calculated as below:
m env
ρ env = .
Venv
693.5
ρ env = = 1770.04 k gm−3 . (49)
0.3918
According to the data sheet, the payload capacities may vary between a minimum of
400 kg to a max payload of 1442 kg. For this analysis, it will be assumed that the
weight of the payload will be the theoretical max weight of 1442 kg.
The volume of helium used to inflate the balloon depends on the amount needed in
order for the balloon to stay afloat. In reality 10-14 percent extra helium is then added
in order to get a positive lift force. These extra percent will be vented out once the
balloon reaches its maximum capacity, i.e. floating altitude. The following equation
describes the lifting force needed for the balloon:

Li f t = ( m env + m c + m pl ) ∗ Added _ H e ⇒
(50)
Li f t = (693.5 + 4 + 1442) ∗ 1.12 = 2396.24 kg,

from Eq. 50 it was possible to calculate how much helium was needed in the following

3. METHOD
fashion:




 Difference in molar mass = M air − M H e = 28.9647 − 4.003 = 24.9617 ⇒

2396.24 kg


≈ 96 kmol Helium ⇒



24.9617 kg/kmol (51)

Since 1 kmol He = 4.003 kg we then get:







 m H e = 96 ∗ 4.003 = 384.27 kg.

Calculating the forces acting on the balloon in the vertical direction is done with re-
spect to the altitude at which the balloon begins the float phase. For this analysis, the
preferred floating altitude is set at 32000 m in altitude. The forces originates from
summarizing the weight of the balloon, the weight of the payload and the weight of the
cables in the flight train. This leads to the following expression
X
F y ↑: F l i f t − F env − F c − F pl = 0, (52)
where F env , F c and F pl is the body forces of the envelope, cables and payload respec-
tively. Eq. 52 can be rewritten and expressed with its components:
Vhe ∗ ·ρ air − ρ he ) · g − m env · g − m c · g − m pl · g = 0. (53)
P32
ρ air = R air ∗T∞
(54)
P32
ρ he = R he ∗T he .
The ideal gas laws were applied in this case to solve for the density of air and helium at
an altitude of 32000 m. The specific gas constants (R air and R he ) are table values that
can be applied when ideal gases are being assumed. The values of the gas constants
are 287 Jkmol −1 and 2077 Jkmol −1 respectively. The ambient temperature and pres-
sure (T∞ , P32 ) was calculated using the equations for the standard atmosphere and
pressure in the beginning of this report (Eq. 3). The temperature and pressure at the
specified altitude is 868.5654 Pa and 237.62◦ K respectively. When calculating for the
Helium density, the same formula applies. Since it is a zero-pressure balloon, the pres-
sure inside of it can be assumed to be the same as the ambient pressure. The Helium

3. METHOD
temperature was calculated using ANSYS for every iteration and used to find the exact
density for every post-calculations. The average Helium temperature were found using
the reference flight. The reference flight will be talked over further below. The average
Helium temperature were 289.03◦ K. Solving for the densities with the parameters
described here gives
868.5654
ρ air = 287∗237.62 = 0.0127 k gm−3
(55)
868.5654
ρ he = 2080∗289.03 = 0.0014 k gm−3 .
From this all parameters in Eq. 53 was known.
For the reference flight, a mass of 384.27 kg of helium was used to inflate the bal-
loon at ground level. As the balloon rises, the gas expands. When the float altitude
is reached, the helium gas has expanded until the maximum volume capacity of the
balloon is reached.
The thermal and optical properties of the material were rather hard to deduce.
Early on into this analysis, the material of the balloon was found to be polyethylene.
This common polymer material exists in many different compositions and enforce-
ment’s. Many different reports and table values were used to calculate an average
of the needed parameters for the thermal and optical properties. The parameters for
the thermal properties used in this report is given in the table below:
Heat Transfer Coefficient 0.86 W m−2 K −1

External emissivity 0.86
Density 1770.04 k gm−3
Specific heat C p 1900 Jk g−1 K −1
Thermal Conductivity 0.40 W m−1 K −1
Table 5: Necessary parameters for the thermal properties on the skin of the balloon.
The necessary parameters assumed for the optical properties are given in the fol-
lowing table:

3. METHOD
Absorptivity (direct, diffuse) 0.3

Transmissivity (direct, diffuse) 0.0
Table 6: Necessary parameters for the optical properties on the skin of the balloon.
The absorptivity and transmitivity parameters for the material of the skin were dif-
ficult to establish. Part of the problem was that the optical properties of the material
for this analysis has been classified by the manufacturer. Regarding the absorptivity,
the absorption constant varies depending on the frequency band the material is ex-
posed to. Instead of assigning the absorption coefficient for the direct visible, direct IR
and diffuse frequency bands, a general absorption coefficient was used. The transmis-
sivity on the other hand, refers to the effectiveness of a material surface to transmit
radiant energy. It is very difficult to obtain the value of the transmissivity coefficient
due to lack of material knowledge.
3.2 Model Setup
In this section, the process of setting up the model before running the calculations in
ANSYS FLUENT is described.
3.2.1 Creating the balloon geometry
The balloon was created with the help of MATLAB. After plotting the balloon in MAT-
LAB, the coordinates for the x- and y-values were extracted and modified using EX-
CEL. After manipulation in EXCEL, the values were saved in a text-file in a proper
way for ANSYS to be able to decode the imported file. Major modifications involved a
simplification of the bottom part of the balloon geometry in order to be able to estab-
lish a good mesh with converging results later on. The coordinate-file could be imported
into ANSYS designmodeler module and then used for the creation of the balloon geom-
etry.

3. METHOD
3.2.2 Setting up the mesh
A three dimensional model is needed in order to run the solar load calculator and calcu-
late the different properties in FLUENT. After the balloon geometry had been created
in designmodeler in ANSYS, the model had to be discretized in order for computations
to be performed. This was done with the help of ANSYS meshing tool. A structured
mesh with hexahedral elements was created as depicted in figures 10 and 11 below. At
the surface of the balloon two separate inflation methods was inserted whose purpose
was to better capture the effects close to the wall and fine-tune the mesh. The inflation
layers can be seen in the right side of figure 11.

3. METHOD
Figure 10: Illustration of mesh for surface of balloon.

3. METHOD
Figure 11: The left side illustrates the mesh on the inside of the balloon (helium do-
main) and the right side shows the inflation layers close to the surface of the balloon.
The quality of the mesh was measured by looking at the skewness of the elements.
The skewness reached a maximum value of 0.73 which is considered fair but the ma-
jority of the elements are below 0.5. Looking at the table provided by ANSYS [1] shown
below we can see that the quality on the mesh was good:
Quality Skewness
equilateral 0
excellent 0-0.25
good 0.25-0.50
fair 0.50-75
poor 0.75-0.90
bad 0.90-<1
degenerate 1
Table 7: Quality dependence vs skewness [1].
Since the student licence of ANSYS was used throughout this thesis work, the
meshing was limited to a maximum of 500 000 elements. The number of elements

3. METHOD
and nodes in the mesh is shown in the table below:
Number of nodes 368388

Number of elements 364894
Table 8: Information about the mesh.
3.2.3 FLUENT setup
After the geometry and meshing had been applied the next step was to import the
meshed geometry into FLUENT. In the setup, a pressure-based solver was chosen and
the gravitational force, g=-9.81 [m/s2 ], was activated with the correct direction. The
energy equation was activated and the realizable k-epsilon (2eqn) with scaleable wall
functions was chosen as the viscous model. Viscous heating and full buoyancy effects
was activated.
In the solar load model setup the windows looks as shown below:
Figure 12: Options chosen for one of the transient simulations.

3. METHOD
Figure 13: Solar calculator values during one of the transient simulations over Kiruna.
As seen in figure 13 it is possible to set the global position by choosing the longi-
tude, latitude and timezone. In this thesis the main point of interest is Kiruna. It is
also possible to set the time of the year, e.g in this case, it indicates that it is the 21 june
at midnight. Depending on the geometry and mesh it is possible to set the mesh orien-
tation. One can also choose the solar irradiation method where a theoretical maximum
indicates that the values for direct and diffuse normal solar irradiation are computed
using NREL’s theoretical maximum method [1]. The fair weather condition uses sim-
ilar calculations as the theoretical maximum method though the biggest difference is
that it enforces larger attenuation on the solar load, which means that the atmospheric
conditions is not completely clear [1].
The "fair weather model" was the only model used throughout this analysis. The
equation for direct normal irradiation used for the fair weather model can be found in
ASHRAE Handbook as
A
Edn = B
, (56)
e sin(β)
where A is the apparent solar irradiation at air mass equal to zero whilst B is the
atmospheric extinction coefficient. The values are based on the earth’s surface on a
clear day. β is the solar altitude, in degrees, above the horizon. [1].
The computation of diffuse solar irradiation on a vertical surface respectively the

3. METHOD
other surfaces is given by
Ed = CY Edn, (57)
(1 + cos(²))
Ed = CEdn . (58)
2
C is a constant and Y is the ratio of sky diffuse radiation on a vertical surface to that
on a horizontal surface. Edn is the direct normal irradiation at the earth’s surface on
a clear day. ² is the tilt angle of the surface (in degrees) from the horizontal plane.
Ground reflected solar irradiation on a surface can be described by
(1 − cos(²))
Er = Edn(C + sinβ)ρ g , (59)
2
where ρ g is the ground reflectivity. Using the solar calculator the total diffuse irradia-
tion on a given surface can be summed up by Er and Ed [1].
The sunshine factor is a linear reduction factor for the calculated incident solar
load. Setting it to 1 indicates that there are no clouds to take into consideration.
Looking at figure 12 it can be seen that the "time steps per solar load update" was
set to 1. The sun direction was calculated using the value computed from the solar
calculator. The spectral fraction is described by the following equation, where V and
IR stands for the visible and the infrared radiation respectively:
V
S pectral f raction = . (60)
V + IR
V+IR is the total incident solar radiation.
The materials used in the simulation model was air (fluid) outside the model and a
thin wall of polyethylene (solid) containing helium (fluid). The fluids were considered
ideal gases meaning that the ideal gas law could be applied. The properties of the
materials is depicted in the table below:

3. METHOD
Variable Air Helium Polyethylene

Density, [kg/m3] ideal gas ideal gas 1770
Specific heat, Cp [j/kg-k] 1006.43 5193 1900
Thermal conductivity, [w/m-k] 0.0242 0.152 0.4
Viscosity, [kg/m-s] 1.7894e-05 1.99e-05 -
Molecular weight, [kg/kmol] 28.966 4.0026 -
Table 9: Material properties.
The boundary conditions included a wall for the balloon and an interior holding the
helium domain. The boundary conditions for the wall is shown below:
Figure 14: Thermal boundary condition for the balloon wall as used for one of the
transient simulations.

3. METHOD
Figure 15: Radiation boundary condition for the balloon wall as used for one of the
For all simulations the wall movement was set to stationary with the shear condi-
tion set to no slip. A standard wall roughness model was utilized at all times. As can be
seen from figure 14 mixed thermal conditions was used. The corresponding parameters
was set as shown in the same figure. The wall thickness was set to 15 µ m indicating the
thickness of the polyethylene which is the film-material on the balloon. As explained
in the theory section, the solar load model does not account for the infrared radiation
from the atmosphere and the earth. This problem was solved by introducing an extra
heat generation rate with the help of an user defined function, see (B) in the Appendix
section.
The equation for the infrared radiation from the earth, as described by Eq. 27,
together with the infrared radiation from the atmosphere, Eq. 31, was implemented
in the UDF. By sweeping over the full surface of the balloon the corresponding heat
generation rate could be calculated by coupling the function to FLUENT. The wall
was considered semi-transparent and for the radiation conditions the absorptivity was
set to 0.3 for all three different types of radiation acting on the film-material. The
transmissivity was assumed to be equal to zero as explained in the balloon section.
The solution method used in order to solve the pressure-velocity coupling was the
SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equations) scheme. The algo-

3. METHOD
rithms process can, in short terms, be described by the following process as stated by
Ref. [3]:



 Boundary conditions are set






 Pressure and velocity gradients are calculated



Discretized momentum equation solved to calculate the intermediate velocity field









 Calculate the uncorrected mass fluxes at faces



Pressure correction equation solved to produce cell values of the pressure correction

Update the pressure field








Update the boundary pressure corrections







Correct the face mass fluxes







Correct the cell velocities







Update density due to pressure changes.

For the spatial discretization method, a first order upwind method is used to solve
the density, momentum, turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent dissipation rate and the
energy. The gradient uses the least squares cell based option while the pressure inter-
polation scheme is solved with the help of the PRESTO! scheme which is recommended
for flows in curved domains as is the case for the balloon.
First-order accuracy was considered good enough for this problem. From this, the
quantities at the cell faces can be determined by assuming that the cell-center of any
variable can be interpreted as a cell-average value. This is considered to be valid in
the whole cell. Hence the quantities of the face can be assumed to be matching the
quantities of the cell. All this strips down to FLUENT setting the face-value, φ f , equal
to the centre value for the cell, φ, in the upstream cell when the first-order upwind
scheme is selected [1]. The transient formulation is set to first order implicit.
3.2.4 Steady-state setup
The atmospheric parameters that was thought to affect the altitude the most during
the flight has been varied and tested using steady state simulations. There exists a

3. METHOD
reference simulation that all the subsequent simulation will be compared to. The three
parameters that were varied and analyzed are different types of terrestrial surfaces,
the solar angle and the sunshine factor.
When the necessary volume of helium to achieve a float altitude at 32000 m was
calculated, the parameters used were the same as the reference values. The reference
simulation constants are given in the table below:
Altitude 32000 m
Ambient Temperature 237.62◦ K
Ambient pressure 868.5654 Pa
Solar angle 57.52◦
Ground surface ε = 0.76 (Desert)
Latitude 23.43560◦
Longitude 24.88600◦
Time and Date 10:00 20/6
Sunshine factor 1.0 (clear sky)
Table 10: Values of the parameters to achieve float at the desired altitude. These are
the parameters for the reference simulation.
The reference simulation was run during the summer at the border between Libya
and Sudan. The reason for why this location was chosen was due to the fact that the
solar angle can be varied from 0◦ − 90◦ . The remaining parameters were defined accord-
ing to the location. The emissivity value was chosen for a desert surface underneath
the balloon. The temperature and pressure values were obtained using the equations
for standard atmosphere above 25000 m in altitude (Eq. 3). With all these parame-
ters set to their assigned values, the balloon will achieve float at an altitude of 32000
m. The results from the steady-state simulations will be compared to the reference
simulation, displaying a lift force with respect to the reference lift at float.
In the first case, the ground surface directly underneath the balloon is being varied.
When different terrestrial surfaces are being used, the reflectivity of the incident solar
rays is deduced with a ground reflectivity parameter. This parameter must also be

3. METHOD
considered when the IR-intensities emitted from the surrounding atmosphere and the
Earth are being computed. The emissivity directly affects the emitting of IR-radiation
from the Earth. The different emissivities for terrestrial surfaces can be found in table
4. The simulation ran through 15-30 iterations to be able to converge at a result. The
varying parameter in this case is of-course the ground emissivity. All the remaining
parameters were held at constant values. These values can be seen in the table below:
Altitude 32000 m
Table 11: Values of the parameters that were held constant when the ground emissivity
was varied.
The simulation yielded the temperature profiles on the skin of the balloon and the
interior temperature of the Helium. The data was exported to MATLAB where the
calculations ran. The average Helium temperature was of importance since it was
used to calculate the exact density of Helium. The density was then later on used to
calculate the vertical forces on the balloon at 32000 m in altitude.
In the second case, the solar angle was varied. In order to investigate solar angles
varying from 0◦ to 90◦ , the balloon has to be located close to the equator. Solar angles
of above 50◦ are impossible to achieve in Kiruna. The same method were applied as in
the previous case when solving for the lifting force when the solar angle varied. The
constant parameters can be seen in the table below:

3. METHOD
Altitude 32000 m
Ground surface ε = 0.76 (desert)
Table 12: Values of the parameters that were held constant when the solar angle var-
ied.
In order to vary the solar angle, the time chosen for when the simulation will take
part is of importance. Finding the solar angle of a position with varying instances in
time, was solved for with the help of an external Solar Positioning Calculator (SPC)
[8]. The time instances is shown in the table below.
Solar Angle γ Time of day

γ = 0◦ 05:36
γ = 10◦ 06:26
γ = 20◦ 07:12
γ = 30◦ 07:58
γ = 40◦ 08:43
γ = 50◦ 09:27
γ = 60◦ 10:11
γ = 70◦ 10:55
γ = 80◦ 11:38
γ = 90◦ 12:22
Table 13: The solar angle at the specified time instance.
In the third and final case, the sunshine factor was varied. The sunshine factor is
a scalar value between 0 and 1. The parameter is a measurement for how cloudy it

3. METHOD
is in the local atmosphere region. A sunshine factor of 1 implies that it is clear skies
while a sunshine factor of 0 implies that the sky is completely covered by clouds. The
parameters that were held constant is found in the table below:
Altitude 32000 m
Ground surface ε = 0.76 (desert)
Table 14: Values of the parameters that were held constant when the sunshine factor
varied.
The simulation run for three trials. The parameters used were; SF = 10 %, SF = 50
% and SF = 100 %.
The results from the three cases can be found under the Results section. The ver-
tical forces that has been calculated from the three cases will be compared with the
reference simulation. If the value of the sum of vertical forces at an altitude of 32000
m is positive, it implies that the balloon will strive to climb in altitude until a new float
altitude is reached. If the sum of the vertical forces are negative, it implies that the
balloon cannot stay at float at the specified altitude and will strive to descent to a lower
altitude where it will achieve a new float altitude. The magnitude of the resulting sum
of vertical forces can be used to deduce the new floating altitude for the balloon.
3.2.5 Transient setup
The transient setup followed the steps described by the sections about the balloon ge-
ometry, meshing settings and the Fluent setup. Since the full cycle of the sun motion
during 24 hours was one of the main factors that this thesis wanted to investigate a

3. METHOD
time dependent simulation was introduced. The time step was set to 15 minutes with
the parameters described in table 15 below:
Time step 900 s

Number of time steps 100
Max iterations/time step 15
Table 15: Settings for the transient simulation.
3.2.6 Setup for spherical balloon simulation
In order to check the model used in this thesis, another simpler simulation was per-
formed. This simulation was meant to compare our model with the one performed by
Zhao et al. [4].
Hence a spherically shaped balloon with radius 15 m was created in ANSYS Design-
modeler. The balloon was meshed with an unstructured grid with 200 358 elements
with the following result:

3. METHOD
Figure 16: Mesh of sphere.
Since a different material was used in the model for this balloon, new parameters
were used based on the other report, Ref. [4].
Variable Air Helium PVF

Density, [kg/m3] ideal gas ideal gas 1580
Specific heat, Cp [j/kg-k] 1006.43 5193 1506
Thermal conductivity, [w/m-k] 0.0242 0.152 0.2
Viscosity, [kg/m-s] 1.7894e-05 1.99e-05 -
Molecular weight, [kg/kmol] 28.966 4.0026 -
Thickness wall, [m] - - 0.0002
Table 16: Material properties used for the spherical balloon.

4. RESULTS
This simulation was performed at an altitude of 20 km at the geographical position

of Beijing with parameters shown in figure 17 below:
Altitude 20000 m
Ambient pressure 5529 Pa
Ground surface ε = 0.95 (Average ground)
Latitude 40◦
Longitude 116◦
Time and Date 0:00 21/6 to 24:00 21/6
Timeszone (+-GMT) 8
Table 17: Values of the parameters used for the simulation of the sphereical balloon.
The time step and maximum number of iterations were identical for the spherical
balloon as compared to the zero-pressure balloon in the case of the thesis. The para-
metric values can be seen in table 15.
4 Results
4.1 Steady State
Several simulations were made with the parameters as described in the steady-state
setup section. Many of the results from the simulations had the behaviour that was
expected even though the variations were relatively small. For each case, a force plot
and a temperature distribution plot will be described and further explained.
The emissivity of the ground surface directly underneath the balloon were varied.
The emissivity value only affects the amount of IR-radiation emitted by the surface
of the earth and how much of the direct solar intensity that is being reflected. The
constant parametric values can be found in table 11.

4. RESULTS
Figure 17: Temperature distribution on the surface off the skin when the ground emis-
sivity was varied.
As seen in figure 17, when an emissivity value of (ε = 0.97) were applied, both
the the maximum and minimum temperature are the highest in the case of the varied
value for the ground emissivity. The variation of the maximum temperature, which can
be seen in the top graph, varies less than the minimum temperature distributions. This
is reasonable due to the fact that the emissivity value affects the IR-radiation emitted
by the Earth and the reflectivity. When the incident radiation is reflected, all vertical
surfaces on the balloon seen from the ground directly underneath the balloon will be
irradiated. The minimum temperatures usually lies on the mid-section of the balloon.
The temperature variation on the surface will change the amount of lift produced at
floating altitude. The difference in force is illustrated in the stem figure below:

4. RESULTS
Figure 18: Illustrates the forces on the balloon at floating altitude with varying ground
emissivity.
The body force experienced on the balloon at float can be both negative and posi-
tive. This value is derived from the comparison with the reference simulation. With an
emissivity of 0.76, the balloon will stay at float at 32000 m in altitude. This is due to the
fact that the constant values in the reference simulation coincides with that particular
simulation. The remaining trials with other emissivity values show that the balloon
will experience a positive body force. The trend is very linear since the emissivity
value is just a scalar factor in the heat equations (Eq. 28). The result implies that for
increased emissivity, the lift-force will increase with it. The positive body-forces means
that the balloon will strive for a new altitude that is slightly higher with respect to the
float altitude.

4. RESULTS
In order to achieve a sweep through the solar angle ranging from 0◦ − 90◦ , the bal-
loon could not be positioned in Kiruna. This is because the solar angle never exceeds
50◦ . Another location must be used where the solar angle reaches 90◦ . Close to the
equator, in the Sahara desert, the desired solar angles could be achieved. When the
balloon was placed above the desert, appropriate values of the constant parameters had
to be chosen. The constant parameters can be found in figure 12. The emissivity used
throughout the solar angle case, was set to 0.76 which corresponds to a ground surface
consisting of sand. As mentioned earlier, the case analyzed in this report considers
that the balloon have reached its maximum volume - indicating that it is operating at
floating conditions. Since it’s outside the scope of the thesis to analyze the shrinking
and growing behavior of the envelope, the volume for a complete 24-hour cycle during
float was assumed to be constant. In reality this analysis would be more realistic if the
calculations was performed after a couple of days, indicating that some of the helium
gas had been vented out.
The temperature variations and the body force experienced on the balloon at the
reference float altitude can be seen in the following figures:

4. RESULTS
Figure 19: Temperature distribution on the surface on the skin when the solar angle
has been varied.

4. RESULTS
Figure 20: Illustrates the forces on the balloon at floating altitude with varying solar
angle.
The maximum temperature profile, as seen in figure 19, varies heavily for solar
angles between 0◦ − 30◦ . The differences in maximum temperature profiles for solar
angles above 30◦ , doesn’t reach the same magnitude of difference. This implies that
the solar intensities doesn’t affect the maximum temperature distribution for large so-
lar angles. The minimum temperature distribution for the different solar angles are
rather equally shifted towards a higher temperature for an increase in solar angle.
Even though the maximum temperature doesn’t increase as much as for larger solar
angles, the average temperature of Helium increases. This causes the force experi-
enced on the balloon to vary in large scale as seen in figure 20. In the latter figure, the
force experienced on the balloon for a solar angle of 0◦ is roughly negative 400 New-
tons. A solar angle of 0◦ indicates that it is night and the solar flux equals zero. The
heat from the atmosphere and ground is still taking part in heating the balloon but

4. RESULTS
the magnitudes are very small in comparison to the solar flux during daytime. The
large negative force will cause the balloon to drop in altitude. This oscillatory motion
is caused by the temperature variation in the diurnal cycle. For a solar angle of 90◦ ,
the average temperature of Helium will obtain the highest value. The effects of this is
that the force experienced by the balloon will acquire the largest positive force in com-
parison to the other trials, as seen in figure 20. The solar flux will irradiate and heat
the whole top section of the balloon while the contribution from IR-radiation heats up
the bottom section, leaving little room for cold environments on the horizontal plane.
The cloudiness in the atmosphere had a rather large impact on the flight charac-
teristics of the balloon. The sunshine factor (SF) was set to completely cloudy, partly
cloudy and clear skies. Throughout all other trials, a sunshine factor of 1 was used,
which implies clear skies. The clouds blocks the reflected radiation and as an effect
of that, the balloon suffers with heat losses on the surface from ground sources. The
constant parameters for this simulation can be found in table 14. The temperature
distribution for the three trials can be seen in the figure below:

4. RESULTS
Figure 21: Temperature distribution on the surface on the skin when the SF was var-
ied.
The temperature distributions suggest that cloudiness is affecting the maximum

temperature significantly in comparison to how the minimum temperature is affected.
When it is partly cloudy (SF=0.5) and completely cloudy (SF=0.1), the maximum tem-
perature is almost unchanged. The minimum temperature distributions are varying as
predicted. Since the clouds prevents most of the long-wave Earth radiation, the surface
temperature decreases. This can be further explained with figure 21.
The average Helium temperature is substantially greater when the SF is 1 (since
there exists a higher skin temperature), compared to the cases where the sunshine fac-
tor is at 0.1 and 0.5. This will lead to greater differences in the body forces experienced
on the balloon at float. The following figure illustrates the body forces on the balloon
in the vertical direction:

4. RESULTS
Figure 22: Illustrates the forces on the balloon at floating altitude with varying sun-
shine factors.
The results from the steady state simulation will be further discussed in the evalua-
tion section. The results shows how the altitude are effected by the varying parameters
and it also indicates how the transient simulation will unfold.
4.2 Transient
4.2.1 Zero-pressure balloon
The results for a simulation between 0:00 and 24:00 during the 1st of June with the
model described in the transient setup section can be found below in figure 23:

4. RESULTS
Figure 23: The max, min and average temperature of the balloon skin during a diurnal
cycle in Kiruna in june.
The graph shows how the temperature varies during a full cycle of 24 hours starting
at midnight. In June the sun is always up since Kiruna is positioned above the arctic
circle but the intensity of the radiation from the sun is strongest during the middle of
the day as can be seen in the graph. The maximum elevation of the sun is at 12:33
and the solar angle is at 44.21◦ . All ice and snow covers have melted by this time
of year thus, the ground surface underneath the balloon were lakes and forests. The
emissivity value set for this simulation was 0.90 and is the average emissivity value
for terrestrial surfaces.
A similar simulation between 0:00 and 24:00 during the 1st of February can be
found below in figure 24 for the same geographical position:

4. RESULTS
cycle in Kiruna in february.
Since this simulation was performed during the winter season it meant that the sun
was only up for a short amount of time during the day. This is depicted in the graph,
see figure 24 above, were the sunrise occurs at 08.51 and sets at 14:48. The intensity of
the sun radiation is also lower compared to the summer, leading to lower temperature
compared to figure 23. The maximum elevation occurs at 11:49 and the solar angle at
that time is 5.24◦ . The ground emissivity had to be assigned in accordance with the
season. Winter season implies a heavy snow cover above the land. A ground emissivity
value of 0.80 were assigned to the simulation.
There was also a simulation with the same setup as for the others during spring-
time. The graph below, figure 25, shows the diurnal effects on the skin temperature in
April:

4. RESULTS
cycle in Kiruna in April.
As one might expect the result from the April simulation lies somewhere between
the winter and summer simulation as can be seen when comparing figure 25 with
figures 23 and 24. The sunrise occurs at 05:45 o’clock and the maximum elevation
occurs at 12:39. The solar angle during its peak have a value of 26.76◦ . The simulation
was run in April, which implies that the ground surfaces should consist of trees and
frozen soil. The ground emissivity used for this run was 0.93.
Below is the contour-plots showing the temperature gradient for different seasons
in the middle of the day when the sun is at its highest position:

4. RESULTS
Figure 26: Wall temperature on the skin at 12:00 for February, April and June starting
from the left.
Looking at figure 26 it is possible to see that the sun does not rise as high during
the winter as it does later in the year. The temperature differences between the season
is relatively high.
The result for the temperature gradient on the skin at the same dates but during
the night shows the result in figure 27 below:
Figure 27: Wall temperature on the skin at 01:00 for February, April and June starting
from the left.
Here, one can notice that the result is practically the same. This ones again shows
the large effect different solar angles have on the temperature.
The body forces experience by the balloon has to be considered from the transient so-
lutions as well. Since all the simulations were established in Kiruna, the same refer-
ence values as for the steady-state case cannot be used. Firstly, the volume of helium
needed to achieve a float altitude of 32000 m has to be recalculated. The calculations
were based on data achieved from the June simulation. The calculations followed the
same method as the Eq. 53 in the Method section.

4. RESULTS
Figure 28: Experienced body force on the balloon with the varying temperature distri-
butions, as seen at an altitude of 32000 m.
Figure 28 illustrates the force experienced by the balloon at a floating altitude of

32000 m. An equilibrium in vertical forces is achieved at 06:00 o’clock for the June sim-
ulation. The solar angle at the specified time was 17.34◦ . The same amount of Helium
was assumed to inflate the balloons for all the transient simulations. Since it was de-
duced from the steady-state simulations that the solar angle was of most significance,
releasing the balloon where the sun nearly never is up will result in a large negative
force experienced at an altitude of 32000 m. This can yet again also be seen in the
figure. In practice the balloon operators adapts the size and payload for the balloon de-
pending on what floating altitude is preferred. In reality the weather conditions won’t
influence the floating altitude that much. What really will influence the float altitude
is the density of the surrounding air, which can be seen if one considers Eq. 53 from

4. RESULTS
earlier, though this density is rather constant, independent on the weather conditions.
The convective motion induced by the density differences of the fluid, is displayed
in figure 29:
Figure 29: Illustrating the convective motion of the fluid inside the balloon in different
planes.
The solar angle for these plots was at 50◦ . In the second window (view 2), the hottest
surface area follows from the solar angle. The last window (view 3) illustrates the
temperature distribution of Helium. It is a slice from the XY-plane at z=0 coordinate.
The temperature distribution shows an even temperature distribution within the fluid.
The hottest areas coincides where the solar rays are irradiating the surface of the
balloon, which is seen in view 2.

4. RESULTS
4.2.2 Spherical model balloon
The results for a simulation between 0:00 and 24:00 during the 21st June with the
model used for our balloon implemented on the spherical model balloon can be found
below in figure 30 where the balloon is 20 km up in the stratosphere over the city of
Beijing:
Figure 30: Wall temperature on the skin at 9:00 in the top figure, 12:00 in the bottom
left figure and at 01:00 in the bottom right figure using the same model as for the zero
pressure balloon simulation.
It can be observed how the temperature has started to rise at 9:00 when the sun
rises in the east. The temperature gradient has then moved until it is hottest at the
top of the balloon when the sun is at its highest point in the middle of the day. In the
night one can identify that the sun radiation has vanished and the infrared radiation

4. RESULTS
of the earth indicates that the hottest area of the surface of the balloon occurs at the
bottom.
This simulation was compared to the results obtained by the report, found in the
references [4]. The results from the report were the same as the simulated results
presented in figure 31 below:
Figure 31: Contour plots as determined in [4] showing the film temperature gradient
at 09:00, 12:00 and 01:00 from left to right.
During the simulation the maximum and minimum temperature was measured on
the envelope. The average temperature of the envelope could be calculated and the
results can be found in figure 32 below:

4. RESULTS
Figure 32: The max, min and average temperature of the balloon skin during a full
day for the spherical balloon using the same model as the one used for the real balloon
model.
The max, min and average temperature for the skin and helium from the comparing
report [4] can be found in figure 33 below:

5. DISCUSSION AND EVALUATION
Figure 33: The max and min temperature of the balloon skin to the left (red and black
lines) and the average temperature of the balloon skin to the right (red line) during a
full day for the spherical balloon as found by the report from Ref. [4].
5 Discussion and Evaluation
5.1 Steady State
The steady-state simulations provided a good insight in how much the varied param-
eters were affecting the altitude for the high altitude balloon. It was found that the
solar angle had the largest impact on the altitude whereas the effects from the ground
emissivity had the least impact on altitude. The three measured parameters are not
the only factors that alters the altitude. Measuring more dependent variables would
increase the reliability of the analysis and lower the uncertainties for the model. The
results from the steady state cases are in coherence with the result output for the
5.2 Transient
The transient simulations confirmed the findings from the steady-state cases and also
evaluated how the temperature distributions on the skin of the balloon varied with the
diurnal cycle. The solar angle plays the largest part in how the body force experienced

by the balloon varies. The temperature distribution is acceptable but the uncertain-
ties is growing with the magnitude of the experienced body force. The transient model
does not include the ambient pressure and temperature variation with altitude. The
temperature experienced on the body would in fact be slightly different due to a dif-
ferent ambient temperature and the expansion of helium would also differ slightly due
to pressure differences with altitude. The overall temperature and force developments
over time follows the correct pattern even though some aspects of the changes are not
considered. This will be further talked about in the future work section.
From the results, it can be deduced that balloons of this type being launched during
wintertime does not need to vent out as much helium as during the spring and summer
in order to reach a floating altitude of 32000 m.
The convective motion of the fluid is clearly evident in figure 29. From the first view
window, it can be seen that the convective area is much larger on the right hand side
compared to the left hand side. The sun is irradiating the same area, which can be seen
in the second window (view 2). The flow is progressing from the bottom upwards along
the skin due to IR-heating. The cold fluid is progressing in the opposite direction,
and this is what causes the vortexes in the fluid domain. The last window (view 3)
shows the convective motion seen from the position of the sun. The motion is rather
symmetrical in comparison to the plot in view 1. But it is still evident that the wall
heating induces upward motion along the inner walls. The large convective motion
within the fluid aids the propagation of thermal energy within the fluid.
5.3 Spherical balloon
Looking at the contour plots in figure 30 it is easy to follow the suns movement from
rising in the east, where the sun stands for the largest raise in temperature on the film
material. Moving on to the last contour, corresponding to nighttime, one can observe
how the infrared radiation from the earth now heats the bottom side of the balloon,
making it the warmest area of the surface. It’s possible to see the contribution from
the infrared radiation from the atmosphere on the last contour separating the tem-

perature on the top surface of the balloon by roughly 8 kelvins from the surrounding
atmospheres temperature. Also we can notice from figure 32 that the difference be-
tween the max and min temperatures of the skin is at its largest in the middle of the
day. The difference is just over 50 kelvin. This indicates that the solar angle have
a great influence on the temperature gradient over the balloon. The difference from
the surrounding atmosphere, which has a temperature of 216.65 K at 20 km altitude,
reaches a maximum value of just over 74 K which is significant.
Comparing the result using the constructed model with the previous work done in
[4], it can be noticed that the constructed model reaches lower temperatures in general.
If a comparison between figures 32 and 33 is made, it can be seen that the difference
between the average temperatures of the balloon skins are rather small when the sun
isn’t up. When the sun rises however the differences increases to over 15 kelvin which
is a rather large difference. The differences could depend on a lot of different factors.
The boundary conditions are very hard to define and the full extent of the settings in
the comparison report [4] are not known. Also, the comparison report implies that they
have implemented a wind speed of 25 m/s in the model which should affect the tem-
perature gradient in a big way as indicated by the report "A comprehensive numerical
model investigating the thermal-dynamic performance of scientific balloon" written by
Liu et al. [5]. With a large wind speed acting on the balloon forced convection will
occur which will affect the external convective heat transfer between the film-material
and the surrounding atmosphere. However this will only make a significant difference
during the ascent phase of the balloon since the balloon then rises with a velocity in
the range 3-5 m/s. During float this velocity will have approached 0 and the balloon
will eventually travel with the wind speed which will lead to a relative velocity of 0 m/s
for the balloon in the end. Forced convection will only exist if a wind speed is imple-
mented. However, wind was a parameter that was not included in this thesis work and
besides, the contour plots in figure 33 suggest that there is definitely not 25 m/s acting
on the balloon since the temperature gradient over the surface would not be as evenly
distributed if that was the case. Also, if one were to compare the contour plot at 01:00
from figure 31 to the graph in figure 33 it indicates that the max and min temperature
on the surface is about 270 and 250 kelvin respectively as indicated by the contour plot

6. CONCLUSION
but this does not correspond to the max and min temperature found at the same time
in figure 33.
In order to verify the results a comparison to a numerical solution and/or experi-
mental results should be performed.
6 Conclusion
In conclusion to this extensive analysis, the influence from the aforementioned atmo-
spheric parameters do play a vital role in how altitude is affected. The solar angle is of
most significance, followed by the sunshine factor and ground emissivity. The conclu-
sion is based on the result from the steady state cases and verified with the transient
simulation. The constructed thermal and optical model in ANSYS FLUENT provided
accurate results for the heat transfer in the domain. The model was tested on another
experiment to verify that the model is functioning correctly. The flight trajectory will
largely oscillate in altitude due to diurnal cycle effects. If a flight with a leveled al-
titude is desired, the unique location of Esrange makes it possible to launch during
winter where the sun never rises. A balloon launch during the summer will be sub-
jected to heavy oscillations in altitude due to the large variation in solar angle.
This analysis will hopefully be valuable for the ANSHAB project at Esrange. The
result and information from this report do explain how certain parameters affects the
altitude, which must be known in order to develop an altitude based autonomous con-
trol system. Before this can be fundamentally employed at Esrange, the model has to
be refined with improvement areas as suggested in the section below.
6.1 Future Work
There are many areas of improvements with this model and analysis. Many of the
improvements for this analysis could be acquired with a broader knowledge of the ma-
terial used as the balloon skin. The lack of information for the material in this case, led
to many different assumptions and many property values were derived from averag-
ing values. The uncertainties with the material also led to difficulties in assigning the

6. CONCLUSION
boundary conditions. These improvements will certainly increase the accuracy of the
results for the desired balloon. In reality the real balloon, which the simulation were
based on, had different thickness of material depending on the location along the sur-
face. The top of the film were twice as thick in comparison to the lower half. It would be
difficult to implement the thickness of the balloon in Designmodeler. It was therefore
assumed that the thickness of the balloon were constant. Temperatures at the top of
the balloon would be larger if the actual thickness was implemented on the upper half
since there would be more volume for the thermal energy to propagate through.
More parameters that is altitude dependent should be considered in future models.
A more accurate steady state result would be acquired. Wind speed and direction
should be a case in future models since it will induce a force convection on the outside
of the balloon skin. In all of the comparative plots for the steady state simulations,
the body force experienced is shown on the body at an altitude of 32000 m. Instead
of displaying the force, the change of altitude would be more appropriate to display.
Since many of the parameters are altitude dependent, differential equations must be
implemented to consider the increase or decrease in altitude. Also some sort of "height
of pressure variation" should be implemented when comparing results from different
seasons since the geometrical altitude apparently can differ several kilometers for the
same pressure during summer compared to winter.
The Solar Load model does not consider the long-wave radiation radiated from the
surface of the Earth and from the atmosphere. The calculations should consider the
changes in ground temperatures throughout the day instead of solely relying on the
international standard atmosphere model.
Lastly, an analytic solution should have been performed to compare with the dy-
namic solution in ANSYS FLUENT. If the dynamic results are similar to the numerical
model, the validity on the model would be greatly enforced. This makes it redundant
from using third party reports. Best case scenario would be to have experimental data
to bring the validity beyond doubt.

REFERENCES
References
[1] Ansys (2016), "User manual for Ansys version 17.2",

https://www.sharcnet.ca/Software/Ansys/,
2018-05-18.
[2] Bardina, J.E., Huang, P.G., Coakley, T.J. (1997), "Turbulence Modeling Valida-
tion, Testing, and Development", NASA Technical Memorandum 110446.
[3] Patankar, S. V. and Spalding, D.B. (1972), "A calculation procedure for heat,
mass and momentum transfer in three-dimensional parabolic flows", Int. J. of Heat
and Mass Transfer, Volume 15, Issue 10, October 1972, Pages 1787-1806.
[4] Kun Zhao, Xixiang Yang, Zhongxi Hou, Lixue Zhang, Weihua Zhang (2013),
"Superheat simulation of the high attitude scientific balloon during floating flight"
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3762.7363.
[5] Q. Liu,Z. Wu,M. Zhu,W.Q. Xu. (2014), Advances in Space Research, Volume 53,
Issue 2, 15 January 2014, Pages 325-338.
[6] NASA (2015), "Earth Atmosphere model"

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/atmosmet.html,
2018-05-18
[7] NASA, "Earth Energy Budget"

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page6.php,
2018-05-18
[8] Solar Position Calculator

https://www.suncalc.org/#/23.4356,24.886,3/2018.06.20/12:22/8848/0,
2018-05-18

REFERENCES
List of figures
[9] NASA, Radiation Loads

http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap2.html,
2018-05-18
[10] Solar flux angles

https://www.cibsejournal.com/cpd/modules/2013-07/,
2018-05-18
[11] Terrestial emissivities

https://www.cibsejournal.com/cpd/modules/2013-07/,
2018-05-18
[12] Super-pressure balloon

https://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/spb_design_approach.html,
2018-05-18
[13] Zero-pressure balloon

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117703011451,
2018-05-18
[14] Altitude fluctuations due to diurnal cycle

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713008259,
2018-05-18
[15] NASA, Internation Standard Atmosphere

http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap2.html,
2018-05-18
[16] Conduction through a film

http://www.engineeringarchives.com/les_heatxfer_conduction.html,
2018-05-18

Appendices
A UDF for wall heat generation rate for spherical

balloon
1 # i n c l u d e " udf . h "

2 DEFINE_PROFILE( h e a t i n g _ i r , t , i )
3 {
4 r e a l y [ND_ND] ; / / Holds p o s i t i o n v e c t o r
5 r e a l Radius = 1 5 . 0 ;
6 r e a l alpha_IR = 0 . 3 ;
7 r e a l eps_ground = 0 . 9 5 ; / / 0.95 = average ground ( depends on s u r f a c e )
8 r e a l P_air = 5 5 2 9 . 0 ; / / Air pressure at 20 km
9 r e a l P_0 = 101325.0;
10 r e a l Boltzmann = 5.6704 * pow(10 , − 8) ;
11 r e a l T_ground = 2 8 8 . 1 5 ; / / Standard atmosphere model
12 r e a l eps_skin = 0 . 8 6 0 ;
13 r e a l area = 2.8274 e3 ;
14 r e a l T_bb = 165.8217; / / 0.052 * T_atm ^ ( 1 . 5 )
15
16 r e a l Q_ground ;
17 r e a l theta ; / / Scaling f a c t o r
18
19 r e a l tau_IR = 1.716 − 0.5 * ( exp ( − 0.65 * P_air / P_0 ) +exp ( − 0.95 * P_air / P_0 ) ) ;
20 r e a l I_IR_ground = tau_IR * eps_ground * Boltzmann * T_ground * T_ground * T_ground *
T_ground ;
21 r e a l IR_atm_heat = eps_skin * area * Boltzmann * T_bb * T_bb * T_bb * T_bb ;
22
23 real x , z ;
24 face_t f ;
25 r e a l Q_atm = IR_atm_heat ;
26 b e g i n _ f _ l o o p ( f , t ) / / l o o p i n g macro used t o l o o p over each f a c e in zone
27 {
28 F_CENTROID( y , f , t ) ; / / returns the value o f the f a c e
c e n t r o i d f o r the f a c e with index f that i s on the thread pointed t o by t .

B. UDF FOR WALL HEAT GENERATION RATE FOR ZERO PRESSURE
BALLOON
29 x = y[1]; / / Value from y [ 1 ] assigned t o F_PROFILE

30 z = y[2];
31
32 i f ( x >= − 15.0 && x <= 0 . 0 ) / / For lower part o f sphere

33 {
34 theta = ( x * − 1.0) / Radius ;
35 Q_ground = ( theta * alpha_IR * I_IR_ground * ( area ) ) ;
36
37 F_PROFILE( f , t , i ) = ( Q_ground+Q_atm ) ; / / Sets Q−value f o r f a c e in

memory
38 }
39 i f ( x >= 0 . 0 ) / / For upper part o f sphere
40 {
41 F_PROFILE( f , t , i ) = Q_atm ;
42 }
43 }
44 end_f_loop ( f , t )
45 }
B UDF for wall heat generation rate for zero pres-

sure balloon
1 # i n c l u d e " udf . h "

2 DEFINE_PROFILE( heating_ir_x2 , t , i )
3 {
4 r e a l y [ND_ND] ; / / Holds p o s i t i o n v e c t o r
5 r e a l alpha_IR = 0 . 3 ;
6 r e a l eps_ground = 0 . 9 0 ; / / varied depending on s u r f a c e
7 r e a l P_air = 868.5645; / / f l o a t i n g a l t i t u d e = 32 km
8 r e a l P_0 = 101325.0;
9 r e a l Boltzmann = 5.6704 * pow(10 , − 8) ;
10 r e a l T_ground = 2 8 8 . 1 5 ; / / Standard atmosphere model
11 r e a l eps_skin = 0 . 8 6 0 ;
12 r e a l area = 26121;
13 r e a l T_atm = 237.6200;
14 r e a l T_bb = 0.052 * pow ( T_atm , 1 . 5 ) ;

B. UDF FOR WALL HEAT GENERATION RATE FOR ZERO PRESSURE
BALLOON
15
16 r e a l theta ;
17 real y_position ;
18 real distance ;
19 r e a l Q_ground ;
20
21 r e a l tau_IR = 1.716 − 0.5 * ( exp ( − 0.65 * P_air / P_0 ) +exp ( − 0.95 * P_air / P_0 ) ) ;
22 r e a l I_IR_ground = tau_IR * eps_ground * Boltzmann * pow ( T_ground , 4 ) ;
23 r e a l Q_atm = ( eps_skin * area * Boltzmann * pow ( T_bb , 4 ) ) ;
24 r e a l h_maxr = 55.418781239008470; / / Height d i s t a n c e t o max radius
25
26 real x , z ;
27 face_t f ;
28
29 begin_f_loop ( f , t )
30 {
31 F_CENTROID( y , f , t ) ;
32 x = y[1];
33 z = y[2];
34 i f ( x >= − 0.5 && x <= h_maxr )
35 {
36 y _ p o s i t i o n = − 1.5006 * pow(10 , − 7) * pow ( x , 5 ) +2.5806 * pow(10 , − 5) * pow ( x
, 4 ) − 0.0016724 * pow ( x , 3 ) +0.033783 * pow ( x , 2 ) +1.139 * x +1.1347;
37 d i s t a n c e = s q r t ( pow((55.5 − x ) , 2 ) + pow ( ( y _ p o s i t i o n ) , 2 ) ) ;
38 theta = ( h_maxr − x ) / d i s t a n c e ;
39 Q_ground = ( theta * alpha_IR * I_IR_ground * area ) ;
40 F_PROFILE( f , t , i ) = ( Q_ground + Q_atm ) ;
41 }
42 i f ( x >= h_maxr )
43 {
44 F_PROFILE( f , t , i ) = Q_atm ;
45 }
46 }
47 end_f_loop ( f , t )
48 }

CFD Analysis of Thermal Effects on Zero Pressure Balloon Altitude

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Using CFD to analyze thermal and optical

influence on a zero pressure balloon at

Space Engineering, master's level

Luleå University of Technology

D EPARTMENT OF S YSTEM - AND S PACE TECHNOLOGY

Using CFD to analyze thermal and optical

3.2.5 Transient setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

5 Discussion and Evaluation 64

A UDF for wall heat generation rate for spherical balloon 71

Page 1 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

1.1 Previous Work

1.2 Outline of Thesis Work

Page 2 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Page 3 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Page 4 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

2.1 Governing equations

2.1.1 Thermal governing equations

Page 5 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Q s,i + Q IR,i + Q c,i + Q con,i = 0, (4)

Q s,i Solar radiation

Table 1: Description of what the different heat contributions are.

2.1.2 Fluid governing equations

Page 6 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

The Navier-Stokes equations is used as the general expression for conservation of

Replacing F from Eq 7 with ρ g gives

Page 7 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

The heat capacity (ρ C ρ ) is assumed to be constant which leads to

Table 2: Description of variables in the governing fluid equations.

Page 8 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

2.2 Thermal models

2.2.1 Solar radiation models

Page 9 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Page 10 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

γ Solar day angle

Table 3: Description of variables.

I albedo = χ · I direct . (18)

Page 11 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

ns = − cos β · cos ψ · i − cos β · sin ψ · j − sin β · k. (19)

sin β · sin φ − sin δ

Page 12 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Figure 4: The involved angles is illustrated with this figure. Credit:[10].

Page 13 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Q direct,i = λ(ns ,n i )|ns · n i |αs A i I direct , (23)

Q albedo,i = λ(n g ,n i )|n g · n i |αs A i I albedo , (24)

Q di f f use,i = αs A i I di f f use . (25)

Hence, the total contribution in a surface element is

Q s,i = Q direct,i + Q albedo,i + Q di f f use,i . (26)

2.2.2 Infrared radiation models

Page 14 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Q IR ground,i = λ(n g ,n i )|n g · n i |α IR A i I ground , (27)

the radiation flux is given by the following formula:

I IR ground = τ IR,atm · ε ground · σ · T 4ground . (28)

The temperature on ground is 288.19◦ K and is determined by using the standard

Ground Surface Emissivity (ε ground )

Table 4: Earth emissivities for a variety of ground surfaces. Credit: [11].

Page 15 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Q IRair,i = εskin A i σT b4 . (31)

The total heat transferred to the balloon can be expressed as

Q IR,i = Q IR ground,i + Q IRair + Q IRskin,i − Q IRout . (32)

Q IR,i = Q IR ground,i + Q IRair . (33)

Page 16 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

Page 17 L ULEÅ U NIVERSITY OF T ECHNOLOGY

H in Eq. 35 is the convection heat transfer coefficient. The coefficient is calculated