Scientific stratospheric balloons offer a valuable service to scientists wishing to test or demonstrate developing technological instruments, or to run fully operational instruments with short preparation times and for a cheap price compared to other similar services. The ballooning industry is therefore a vital part of the scientific community as it enables less funded and experienced scientific organisations to actively engage in the development of their technologies. In the context of scientific stratospheric balloons, the speed of permeation affects among other things the flight time and the flight planning, as these are determined by the rate of loss of the buoyancy force keeping the balloon afloat. Most balloons today use helium as lifting gas, but the ballooning industry is today facing increased pressure to switch to hydrogen gas. Before making this switch, understanding how hydrogen gas behaves differently, in terms of permeation or otherwise, is important to prevent unexpected flight paths among other things. In this thesis, two experiments were conducted in order to attempt to determine the ratio of permeation speed between hydrogen gas and helium through balloon membranes. One experiment used a manometric method, where the pressure of permeant in a diffusion chamber was measured over time. The other experiment measured the buoyancy force of permeant-filled balloons over time. The resulting ratio of permeation speed may give more confidence in predicting how much faster or slower a stratospheric balloon filled with hydrogen will lose buoyancy force.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:ltu-107456 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Magnusson, Tim |
| Publisher | Luleå tekniska universitet, Institutionen för system- och rymdteknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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