The TV show "Wings" did a segment on the Goodyear inflateable airplane, and showed the interior of the air cells. The interior has a series of hundreds of flat "threads" that bridge the top and bottom skins and help shape the exterior by limiting the maximum shape of each cell. This allows you to pump up the cell without it looking like the Michelin man.
I would think the easy way to do the "ballute" inflateable nose and tails would be to have a small onboard compressor that was more tuned to volume (I can't imaging needing more than 4 psi in one of these things) than pressure. As needed, the pump could turn on and inflate the structure. That or maybe you could use an EGR valve and program it to turn on when needed to pump the structures up with exhaust.
Joanne Fabrics has a pretty good selection of non-permiable fabrics for doing experiments. I'd probably use a bead of Goop or E-6000 to hold everything together, and use some of the Tap Plastics "Marine Mounting System" to attach the structures but keep them removeable for tweaking. Just guessing, but the front structure would probably need more stiffness, since one problem blimps and dirigibles run into is their skins rippling on the front when thier reach higher speeds. The low pressure region on the rear would probably help shape the rear structure. Maybe some "stays" built into the nose would help it maintain shape.
|