Zeppelins - Part 4 - How They Work

Let's take a closer look at the physics behind airships and what made Zeppelins so special.
How does their lift change during flight?
Which innovations did they use to compensate these effects?
How did they constanty improve the Zeppelin's design?
Check out my other Zeppelin videos for more:
• Zeppelins
#zeppelin
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Museum Zeppelinheim
E.A. Lehmann - Auf Luftpatrouille und Weltfahrt

[@MaxMut.]

Fascinating, absolutely thankful for this 4 series video Always wanted to hear about it in detail Thanks for take the time to study ad publish this work Always in love of airborne machinery Yes Sir.. please continue on this type of topic “ Thanks again!

[@BSport320]

Glad you enjoyed it! More to come!

[@MaxMut.]

@@BSport320 more to come .. That’s BIG”

[@peroplaninic2220]

It seems to me that zeppelins could benefit greatly from some form of a blended wing design where part of the lift would be provided from dynamic lift caused by the airfoils. If engines / motors could be articulated to provide vertical thrust in case of taking off or reverse thrust in case of landing it might even be able to possess VTOL characteristics which would mitigate the problems of a typical heavier-than-air aircraft. Also, lower structural loads on the lifting surfaces in comparison to cantilevered plane wings might make possible for variable camber design to vary lift/drag characteristics mid flight if necessary, although I think it would not be needed. Perhaps this sort of design with a bigger top surface area per volume would allow for feasible solar powered flight if thin film solar technology improves. Another potential source of energy can be hydrogen fuel cells that can utilize hydrogen from the zeppelin and draw oxygen from surrounding air, while utilizing the generated water as its ballast.

Amazing topic. Thank you!

[@fredd3.14]

thanks! good video - I always wondered about zeppelin mechanisms, but never enough to research it that deeply myself. I would not be opposed to more aircraft topics if you're interested in them!

[@danvorobiov]

Thanks. Very interesting

[@gafrers]

Interesting as always

[@msgfrmdaactionman3000]

Thanks for all the science involved explained! I feel I could get some college credits for watching your series, lol. Great stuff, thanks!

[@thesunnynationg]

every time i hear that intro i get goosebumps. hell of a sound

[@cbongphd]

Incredible to witness the sheer amount of hard work and diligence to tame what is quite a volatile machinery to a reliable form of transportation. That said, I think even if Zeppelins had never burned down, it would not be competitive to today's aircraft because it can't carry as much nor travel as fast.

[@JoshuaC923]

Helium mix optimum

[@JefferyHall-ct2tr]

I think it is not now understood how much large airships derived dynamic lift from the shape of the hull. This was important, because you were getting free lift from the airship moving forward through the air. This eliminated some of the dumping of ballast and valving of gas. One dramatic example of the amount of dynamic lift these ships could produce, was during the R-101 disaster. The thing was so heavy from all the load, plus headwinds, plus rain on the cover, that when the cover failed near the nose, it lost what dynamic lift it had that was actually keeping the thing in the air. Plus when the ship started diving, they reduced speed on the engines, and that killed some of the dynamic lift as well. And it crashed. Dynamic lift was crucial on the American airships which used helium, and the U.S. Navy was VERY stingy with it as it was so expensive, and they tended not to valve helium unless very necessary. The U.S. Navy quickly developed exhaust condensers to fit on the engines also, to help reclaim some water ballast, also. If you have ever seen photos of the U.S.S. Akron or Macon, those square shaped things that run vertically above the propellers on the hull were condensers to recover water.

[@davidreichert9392]

Oh no, I already got suckered in when I found out that my oven had a Sabbath mode and it turned out to not be what I thought it was. You're not going to get me with this Zeppelin thing of yours.

[@zibingotaeam3716]

Hmm. Why valve the hydrogen or helium out of the airship instead of compressing it in to a storage tank? Is that just not fast enough? Seems like the weight of a storage system wouldn't be an issue when the Zeppelin needs tons of water as ballast. This would also eliminate the danger of hydrogen and oxygen mixing.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

I've wondered that too. My guesses are (1) compressing a flammable gas like hydrogen is risky and requires heavy equipment; (2) the tanks to hold the compressed gas are heavy.

[@zibingotaeam3716]

@@grizwoldphantasia5005 well, a divers bottle out of metal is usually pressurized to 200 atm and those are easily carried on your back. I'd wager that the storage tank would not be prohibitively heavy. It's probably more of a cost question, it may have been just cheaper to dump the hydrogen over board. Furthermore, hydrogen is not flammable on its own, so when you're compressing pure hydrogen because you're only using hydrogen from the gas bags, there is no risk of combustion

[@peroplaninic2220]

It seems like a very useful idea for current day and age, but it might be that during the zeppelin era engines used to power the compressors were way too spark-prone. Also, pressure vessel manufacturing and hydrogen embrittlement mitigation weren't as developed as in today's age. I would say that they probably made a decision to stick with the most reliable and simple method of attitude control, even though it wasn't the most efficient one.

[@davidaugustofc2574]

It's a good consideration, divers bottles are made out of carbon fiber, not solid metal, so I would bet they couldn't make this work at the time (composites should fully change how Zeps are made). The pumps may be light today but they still require loads of power to run, from batteries that are heavy, they also didn't have solar panels back in the day. They could now use much more advanced flexible containers, etc. If you were to make one of these today, sure, we have loads of technology we take for granted and would make the entire thing plus simulations in CAD before building it within 3mm of accuracy.

[@zibingotaeam3716]

@@davidaugustofc2574 If divers bottles are made out of CF and not metal - how come people were diving back in WW2? Why would they need electric pumps instead of diesel powered ones?

[@Apollo_guy]

the cause of the Hindenburg disaster was because there was a hydrogen leak in on of the back gas bags witch is why it was leaning up then one of the engines at the back had a lot of carbon built in the engines causing sparks.

[@thesillyquestions]

German engineering is always just in a world of it's own

[@deluca2922]

*How zeppelins worked

[@zinj2618]

We're waiting for the aero analysis for the updated RB19 in Hungary😩😩😩😩

[@BSport320]

I know, I’m travelling at the moment but will do a summary

[@pklimbic]

Compressing H or He into a pressure tank instead of releasing it wasn’t an option yet?

[@davidaugustofc2574]

I would guess no, but could be today

[@nizm0man]

First!

[@user-vu1lb6qb3z]

Subover marinegineer.

[@user-vu1lb6qb3z]

Tesla Victor Schurberger, Spurr you coming.😂

[@raffriff42]

Aah so there is another side to the Hindenburg story I haven’t heard before… yes it did work out well for US propaganda purposes.

[@Johan-ez5wo]

Too well..