Numerical investigation for cooperative multi blimp system

This paper presents the numerical investigation on multi blimp motion using three dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) approach. The cooperative flight configuration is important to reduce energy and improve the communication reliability within the group. Therefore, we examined the influence of drag and pressure force of cooperative configurations shape in several formations: vee, echelon, line and column. The use of different velocity is also presented to study the effect on a cooperative navigation process. The outcome of this analysis provides the optimal configuration for multi blimp operation. Based on the numerical results, the vee formation should be considered as the best cooperative configuration with low drag effect of drag coefficient and lift coefficient which offered good data overlapping.