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

飞艇设计和制造最近在加拿大重新引起了人们的兴趣，BASI和Flying Whales吸引了大量（数百万）风险投资。本文提出的NOVA项目旨在开发一种新型制造技术，该技术可能导致对室外和室内飞艇有用的突破，同时使其对涉及人类的应用更安全。 室内飞艇的许多应用已经被提出：结构检查，地下勘探，监控区域安全，监控仓库中的货物，检测工厂中的气体泄漏......然而，尚未实现任何一项目标。采用这些技术的主要障碍仍然是它们的数量大和外壳脆弱。我们决定探索刚壳空气静力飞行器的概念，我们给它起了个名字叫“空气稳定器”。对于任何浮空器来说，大部分质量集中在含气外壳的表面，因此必须具有非常低的表面密度。这对于柔性膜来说不是问题，但是同时非常轻、不可渗透和刚性的封套的实现到目前为止是不可想象的。在我们目前的研究中，我们计划使用由金属材料或聚合物棒制成的3D打印微网。在探索这条道路的同时，通过与该提案的新团队成员McDonald教授（UofA）的合作，深入探索最有前途的制造方法之一的可能性出现了。这种方法涉及由轻质聚合物固体棒晶格制成的模板;这些模板镀有薄金属层;然后由于特定的溶剂而消除聚合物，留下壁厚为几微米的薄中空管晶格。类似的技术显示出以前所未有的低密度实现高强度，并表现出弹性恢复。由此产生的超轻结构对未来轻于空气的飞行器的发展具有巨大的潜力。

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.