Petal layout Development of Ellipsoidal Envelope

The envelope of the airship has to be manufactured using the concept of petal layout development
which involves the combination of several similar petals combined together to give ellipsoidal
envelope. We have decided to use eight petals with 45 degrees each merged together to form
envelope for the airship. Each petal will be constructed with following parameters:

Length of each arc 8.02 m

Perimeter of petal 16.041m
Maximum distance between two arcs (not line rather a curvature) 0.9288m
5.495 m2 (from CAD) and 5.3876 m2
Surface area (theoretically)

The draft of an individual petal is presented below:

Bottom view

Isometric View

Right View Front View Left View Rear view

Top view

Figure 1: Petal Layout Development

The isometric view of petal modelled in CATIA is presented below:

Figure 2: CAD model of a Petal

Eight of such petals (refer to figure 2) will be combined to form the ellipsoidal envelope with length
of 7.22 meters and maximum diameter of 2.3678 meters. The ellipsoidal envelope after combining
these petals will look like the configuration presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Envelope of airship after merging eight petals

The draft of the envelope is presented below:

Bottom view
Isometric View

Right View Front View Left View Rear View

Top View

Figure 4: Draft of the Envelope

Further work connected with this report:

1) To find out whether given parameters are sufficient or not for the development of petals
2) To work parallelly on equation equations of two arcs that are forming the petals