Potential of bio-inspired micromeshes for the design of rigid-shell aerostats: microplating manufacturing process based on additive manufacturing.

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Airship design and manufacturing has recently known a renewed interest in Canada, as shown by the massive amounts (several millions) pulled in venture funding by BASI and Flying Whales. The NOVA project proposed here aims to develop a novel manufacturing technology that could lead to breakthroughs useful for outdoor and indoor airships, while making them safer for applications involving humans. Many applications have been proposed for indoor airships: structural inspection, underground exploration, monitoring of areas to be secured, monitoring of goods in a warehouse, detection of gas leaks in factories... However, none have yet materialized. The main barriers to their adoption remain their large volume and the fragility of their envelope. We decided to explore the concept of rigid-shell aerostatic flying machines to which we gave the name "aerostabiles". For any aerostats, most of the mass is concentrated at the surfaces of the gas-containing enclosure, which therefore must have a very low surface density. This is not a problem for a flexible membrane, but the implementation of envelopes that are simultaneously very light, impermeable and rigid was unconceivable up to now. In our current research, we planned to use 3D printed micromeshes made of hollow tubes of metallic materials or rods of polymer. While exploring this path, the possibility to explore in depth one of the most promising manufacturing methods appeared through a collaboration with Prof. McDonald (UofA), a new team member for this proposal. This approach involves templates made of light-polymer solid rod lattices; these templates are plated with a thin metallic layer; the polymer is then eliminated thanks to a specific solvent, leaving a lattice of thin hollow tubes whose wall thickness is a few micrometers. Similar techniques were shown to achieve high strength with unprecedented low density and to exhibit elastic recovery. The resulting ultralight structures have an enormous potential for the future development of lighter-than-air vehicles.