STATION KEEPING OF WIND DRIVEN STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON VIA PROPULSION UNIT

Abstract

One of the most difficult problems in stratospheric balloon’s design is to keep theballoon’s geographic coordinates. Stratospheric wind speeds vary significantly bothdaily and throughout the year. Wind drag acting on the balloon should bemanipulated to control the horizontal coordinates (longitude and latitude degree)of the stratospheric balloons. In this paper, propulsion unit is applied to a winddriven stratospheric balloon to keep balloon’s coordinate over flight area. Thesimulation was applied to a zero-pressure high altitude balloon using actual windprofile for the first time to control the horizontal movement of the balloon. Inaddition, required thrust power and some parameters effects on it have beeninvestigated. The results indicate that propulsion unit would be helpful tomanipulate the horizontal motion of the balloon and to achieve keeping theballoon’s geographic location.