Multibody Advanced Airship for Transport (MAAT)

Research Fellows: Dr Vitaly Voloshin and Dr Farbod Khoshnoud

Academic supervisor: Dr Y Chen

Funding: £274,000

Funding body: EU FP7

Period: September 2011-February 2014  

The MAAT project aims to investigate aerial transportation possibility by airship based cruiser-feeder system with zero emission. MAAT is a heavy lift cruiser-feeder airship system for intercontinental and continental middle and long range transports for passengers and goods. It is based on airships with electric propulsion powered by photovoltaic system and buoyancy force. It is composed as a flower, with a central hexagonal part PTAH (Photovoltaic modular Transport Airship for High-altitude), designed to stay at stratosphere altitude, which is joined with six feeder, as petals, marked with the name of ATEN (Airship Transport Elevator Network) hexagonal too. The consortium of this EU FP7 funded project consists of 12 members across EU, Russia and South America. The UH team is the WP3 team leader in Flight Mechanics and contributes to Energy and Control Systems.