Aerospace Science and Technology 14 (2010) 557-563

Inflatable kites using the concept of Tensairity

Joep C.M. Breuer, Rolf H. Luchsinger*
Swüqs F-edcral Labomtories for Morcnols Testing and Rescorch. Center for Synergetic Srmctures. Ueberlondstrasse 129. CH-8600 Duebendorf, Switzerland

ARTICLEINF O ABSTRACT
Arrid€ history:
Inflatable structures have very interesting properties such as low weight, compact transport volume and
Received 18 November 2009 easy set up. Both manned and unmanned aircraft have been built using inflatable wings. However. a
Received in revised form 19 February 2010 severe drawback of inflatable wings is the small load-bearing capacity of such structures which limits the
A-cepted 21 April 2010
aspect ratio of this wing type. Introducing the structural concept of Tensairity overcomes this deficiency.
Available online 24 April 2010
Tensairity combines an inflatable structure with struts and cables and thus increases
Komori-s.• the stiffness and maximal load of the inflatable structure tremendously A further improvement of
Inflatable wings stiffness and ultimate load of Tensairity can be achieved by introduction Of fabric webs into the airbeam.
Tensairity
Kites In this work, the concept of web-Tensairity was further developed into curved girders to be able to build
Fabric structures wings with dihedral, sweep and twist. A comparison between a curved and a straight web-Tensainty
girder proved that their load deflection behaviour was very similar and superior to a curved and straight
airbeam with the same dimensions and internal pressure. The stiffness of the web-Tensairity girder was
estimated analytically. To demonstrate the concept of Tensairity wings. the goal was set to build a
Tensairity kite which flies stable on a single tether. The latest kite prototype has a span of almost 8 m and
a projected area of 11 m2 . Results of structural and aerodynamic tests of this kite are presented-
@ 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
the

1. Introduction c
hord direction and a very thick profile allowing for a very low
Inte
rnal air pressure of 0.02-0.05 x 105 Nm ¯2 . Slender wings as the so-
called Pneuwing were later realized by the company with
Inflatable structures have very interesting properties such as low
weight, compact transport volume and easy set up. They have
found applications e.g. as boats or in emergency tents. Using
Corresponding author Tel.: .41 44 823 4090: fax: 44 823 4211.
inflatable structures for wings was already suggested in a patent
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.CM. Breuer).
from 1933 by McDaniel [151 which introduced inflatable
LifJuchsingereempach (RH Luchsingeo http://ww%'±rnpa.ch (J-C.M.
spars for wings. There were two interesting developments Breuer). http://www-empa.ch LuciiS1nger).
in manned flight using inflatable wings during the 1950's,
namely the Inflatoplane from Goodyear, which was further tOO-9G38/S see front matter C 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
developed till the 1970's 115,41 and the British M.L Utility Mkl, webs in span direction and a higher internal pressure in the order
which was a tailless design with a symmetrical airfoil of 24% of 0.7 x 105 Nm -2 [121.
thickness [1 J. Another example is the NASA Paresev IC of 1963, a Lately, the interest in inflatable wings has shifted to unmanned
Rogallo wing with inflatable beams, which was however not very aircraft with examples as the NASA Dryden 12000 inflatable wing
stable in flight [171. and the prototypes of the University of Kentucky in cooperation
More recently. from 1990-2000, the Swiss company prospec tive with ILC Dover [6,5.9J, who also made the early example of the
concepts developed a series of aircrafts with inflatable wings mai Apteron.
nly as technology demonstrators. The tailless Stingray had webs Surf kites (tube kites) can also be seen as inflatable wings.
Compared to the Paresev, their design is today quite refined. The conventional wings. As a result. high air pressure, thick wing
development of these kites is advancing quickly; however, the profiles, low aspect ratio or a combination of these factors need to
major focus is on the handling of the kite and not on the primary be used in their design limiting the aerodynamic and structural
structure. performance considerably. It is the purpose of this work to
In all these efforts to develop inflatable wings the temporary overcome this deficiency by introducing the structural concept of
aspect (compact transport, fast set up) coupled with the low Tensairity@ 1131 in wing structures. Tensairity combines an
weight were major driving forces. In some applications, the crash inflatable structure with struts and cables to increase the stiffness
resistance of inflatable structures and the ability to float on water and maximal load of the inflatable structure tremendously. First
are further important aspects. On the other hand. a severe successful implementations of Tensairity have been realized in civil
drawback of inflatable wings is their very limited load bearing engineering applications
capacity. Inflatable wings are much more flexible than
Zi710.1016fjuL2010ÅA009
558 J.CM. Breucr, RH. Luchsingcr/ Aerospocc Sciencc and Technology 14 (2010) 557-563

such as bridges and roof structures (18). Some element (thick line) and the tension element
initial work on the use of Tensairity in wings (thin line) are given in the figure. This
was done recently 131. approach limited the design to straight wings
In this paper Tensairity kites are (31. To be able to build a Tensairity kite which
investigated. Currently the scientific interest in flies stable on a single line, the shape of the
(inflatable) kites is increasing for their kite had to be changed resulting in severe
potential to harness wind power for energy modifications of the web-Tensairity concept.
production or ship propulsion The The first improvement to create more design
aerodynamic efficiency of these kites is crucial freedom with Tensairity was to integrate the
and Tensairity might allow for significant tension element in the web (Fig. 3b). A logical
improvements compared to the current kites. second step was then to integrate the
In Section 2, the Tensairity concept is compression element in the web as well (Fig.
explained. A major focus is set on web- 3c). This allowed to give the girder a slight
Tensairity which is important for the curvature and thus results in a slight dihedral
applications in wing structures. The evolution in case of a wing. But the dihedraJ was too
of the design of an 1 1 m 2 Tensairity kite as limited to be effective in wings. Furthermore,
well as some tests and estimations of the the lateral support of the compression
performance are presented in Section 3. Flight element by the fabric decreases when it is
tests of the 1 1 m2 kite are reported in Section positioned in the web. Therefore, the
4 and conclusions are drawn in Section 5. compression element needs to be curved to
obtain a higher curvature of the girder (FW
2. Tensairity 3d). The hull has a curved shape and inflation
of the hull bends the initial straight
The basic idea of Tensairity is to combine compression element, which itself needs to
an airbeam with conventional cables and have a small bending stiffness. The layout of
struts to improve the load bearing capacity of Fig. 3d was further improved to be able to
inflatable structures. A basic Tensairity beam build wings with sweep and twist. It must be
consists of a compression element, a low said that the amount of dihedral is limited by
pressure airbeam which is tightly connected to the allowable initial curvature of the
the compression element and two tension compression element. Sweep and twist are
elements which run from end to end of the also limited because otherwise the web is not
compression element in a spiral way around properly aligned with the rnain load direction.
the airbeam (Fig. 1). The low pressure airbeam Another approach to generate dihedral is
(typical pressures for Tensairity structures are shown in Fig. 3e. However, experimental
in order of 0.1 x 105 N/m2 ) pretensions the investigations
cables and stabilizes the compression element compression element
against buckling. Research has been done on
the static response of spindle shaped
Tensairity girders under bending loads by
analytical, experimental and numerical
methods [1 ll. Recently, Tensairity columns
were investigated 119,211. In this case three
compression elements are equally spaced
around a spindle-shaped airbeam. A further
improvement of the stiffness and ultimate
inflated hull tension element
load of Tensairity is expected by introduction
of fabric webs into the airbeam. The web will Fig. 1. Basic setup of a cylindrical
give more support to the compression Tensairity beam.
element and has the ability to transfer shear
forces. A cross-section of a plain Tensairity
girder and a web-Tensairity girder can be seen
in Fig. 2. So far, webs have been applied in
Tensairity for wing structures [31 and columns
[211.

2.1. Evolution of web-Tensairity girders Fig. 2. Cross-section or a standard spindle shaped

Tensairity girder (left) and a spindle shaped web-Tensairity
The first Tensairity wing prototypes were girder. The black dots indicate the tension and
built with symmetric, spindle-shaped webs as compression element.
shown in Fig. 3a. The web, the compression
 a

Fig. 3. Different web layouts for web-Tensairity

girders.

showed that the connection of the two parts

at the central region is very unstable and
prone to buckling even with additional
stiffeners. Thus, the concept of Fig. 3e was not
followed up in more detail.

2.2. Straight against curved compression element in

Tensairity

To evaluate the difference in the load

bearing behaviour of a straight and a curved
compression element in a Tensairity girder
(Fig. 3 b and d), two similar models were
made. Both models had a span of 1.96 m and
a web height of 0.04 m at the tips and 0.07 m
at the centre. A solid 4 mm carbon rod was
used as a compression element and the
tension element was composed of two 170 kg
Dyneema lines. The models were made of
Icarex rip-stop polyester kite fabric with PU
bladders. The total weight of the models was
about 320 g each, of which about 50 g was
due to the tension and compression element.
The radius of curvature of the bended
compression element was 236 m leading to an
angle between the centre and the tip of 12
degrees. To mimic the load distributi011 Of a
wing structure the specimens were suspended
on a whippletree system with 8 evenly spaced
attachment points (Fig. 4). The load consisting
of lead weights weighing between 0.25 kg and
2.5 kg was introduced at the centre. The
deflection was measured at 5 positions along
the span. Internal air pressure values of 0.05'
0•1 and 0.15 x 105 N m -2 (50. 100 and 150
mbar) were applied. Thze measured load-
deflection curves for a pressure of 0.1 x 105
NIII-
J.CM. Breuer. RH. Luchsinger/ Aerospace Science and Technoloo 14 (2010) 557-563 559

r
esults and the average value of the 3 tests is given.
The absolute deviations from the measurements to
this average value had maximum of 15%. These large
deviations were measured durmg initial deflection
and buckling. In the linear part of the curves
variation was not more than 5%. To compare the
performance %eb-Tensairity with a simple airbeam
the specimens were also lested with removed
compression element as shown in Fig. 5.
overall behaviour of the straight and curved
Tensairity Order is very similar. The straight and the
curved web-Tensairity ) kimen have about the same
stiffness but the ultimate load of 'the curved
Tensairity girder is higher. For both specimens it
was observed that as soon as the stiffness starts to
decrease wrinkles to build up in the upper side of
the hull at the centre of girder. At the ultimate load,
the compression element buckles in the central
part causing a rotation of the girder. This viour has
Fig. 4. Bending test setup with the curved web- been observed for both the straight and the curved
Tensairity model. Fig. 6. Sct up for the analytical model to estimate the
deformation of the webTensairity beam.

specimens. For the airbeam the initial stiffness is

reduced at a load in the order of 20 N, where
wrinkles start to appear which grow to a single
big fold at the ultimate load of about 30 N to 40
N. The load-deflection behaviour of the curved
and straight airbeam is very similar.

Deflection (mm)

5. Load-deflection behaviour of straight and curved web-

Tensairity beams, üght and curved airbeams (no Tensairity)
and an analytical estimation for the *Tensairity beams for an
air pressure of 0.1 x 105 Nm ¯2 .

shown in Fig. 5. The deflection is given as the

difference between the centre deflection and the
average of the deflection of the two outmost
positions (at 1/16 and 15/16 of the span). An
initial vright of 11 N was applied to tension the
lines of the whippletree Y stem. All tests were
done 3 times to check the repeatability of the
 In relation to the airbeam, both the tension element. Assuming a linear variation of
straight and the curved Tensairity specimen the distance along the span

160

140

120

100

solved with

2
have an initial stiffness which is about a
ho
factor 3 higher for the same internal
pressure, while the ultimate load is about a h(x) =
factor 4 higher. This is an impressive result the right side of Eq. (1) becomes independent
considering that the tension and of x and Eq. (1) can be easily integrated. One
compression element add only 16% to the obtains a parabolic deformation with the
total weight. And the curved Tensairity girder deflection for 0 < x 1/2 given by
performs as good as the straight Tensairity
girder. This gives confidence for the
application of web-Tensairity in wings with
dihedral. where the span L = 2 • l, the slenderness y =
An analytical estimate of the deflection L/ho and the initial load Fo have been
of a straight webTensairity girder can be introduced. The analytical estimate for y = 28,
given [31. The model relies on beam theory 1.49 x 106 N, EtAt = 5.32 x 104 N and Fo
and assumes that the relative distance
= 11 N at x = 7 L/ 16 as a function of the total
between the compression and the tension
applied load is shown in Fig. 5. Despite the
element is constant under the bending load
various simplifications. the initial stiffness of
which is reasonable for high enough
the webTensairity girder is very well predicted
pressure values. The experimental situation
by this analytical model.
(Fig. 4) can be described as a cantilever with
a homogeneous distributed load (Fig. 6). A
straight web-Tensairity girder is considered.
The differential equation

(1)

• (l —x) 2
and

El(x) = EAct •
EcAc • EtAt
EAct =
+ EtAt
with q the distributed load, I half of the
span of the beam, EcAc, EtAt the product of
the Young's modulus and cross sectional
area of the compression and tension
element, respectively and h the vertical
distance between the compression and
St-so
J.C.M. ttrr•ucr. RIL luchsfrcgcr/Acmspact' Science and rrchnology 14 (2010) 557-561
a attempts were made to fly this model.
A variety of fixed control surfaces
was added. However, the flight
stability proved to be very poor. A
search for a single line stable kite
with a wing-like
lifting surface with
a reasonable aspect
c ratio resulted in the
"Pfeil Ente" 12).
This design was
modified with
d Tensairity wing
spars as shown jn
Fig. 3 d and e (Fig.
7c). The resulting
kites proved to be
e very stable with a
range of different
canard wings. Then
followed a couple
of canard kites with
increasing size and complexity of
Fig. 7. Development of the design of the
wing shape using more and more air-
Tensairity kite (views from the top with the
same scalei
supported structural members (Fig.
7d) while the number of tubes for the
main spar was reduced to 2.
3. Tensairity kites Although this probably decreases the
aerodynamic efficiency. the reduction
The first built Tensairity kites had in overall complexity. weight.
a rectangular shape and no dihedral construction effort and the inflated
which led to a very poor aerodynamic volume was found more irnportant at
stability [31. The main goal of this this stage of the development. With
initial project was to realize a increasing size. the Tensairjty nose
Tensairity wing with a well defined (fuselage) (see Fig. 7d) supporting
airfoil. To improve the concept of the canard wing proved to be too
Tensairity wings further the goal was flexible, especially in torsion. A
set to build a Tensairity kite which carbon rod was tried as
flies stable on a single tether. To this
end, the Tensairity concept needed to
be adapted to more complex wing
shapes.

3.1. Kites development

The evolution of the Tensairity

kites both in shape and size is shown in
Fig. 7. The first kites with a rectangular
plan-form (Fig. 7a) had webs as shown
in Fig. 3 a and b. As a first step towards
more complex shapes a structural model
was made with the web layout of Fig.
3c and an elliptical plan-form (Fig. 7b). Fig. 8. The three views of the Tensairity kite with
To decrease the weight the aft part of 1 1 m2 surface area.
the airfoil of this model had a single
skin which was tensioned by 5 thin
carbon rods which were shaped and
supported by inflatable struts for most
of their length. The skin in surf kites is
also tensioned in a similar way by
inflated struts. Although this
construction method saves weight and
reduces the complexity of the kite, it
also reduces the accuracy of the airfoil
shape. In order to have an accurate
shape of the nose, an inflated structure
with three webs was used in the model
of fig. 7b while the nose is given by a
single air tube in a surf kite. Several
 J.CM. Breuer, RH Luchsingcr / Aerospacc Science and Technology 14 (2010) 557-563 561
5
p = 0.07# N/m2
800

Fig. 9. Tensairity kite with 11 m2 surface area before

launch during testinv
o 100 200 300 400
a nose, but it was too vulnerable. Also the long 500 600 700 800 Average
nose and the canard wing made ground-handling deflection of the tips (mm)
of the kite difficult. The decision was made to
abandon the canard configuration and 10. Load-deflection behaviour of the Tensairity kite
experiments were made with different tail with 11 m2 surface area for an air pressure of 0.07 x 10 5
configurations. In the end the centre section of Nm -2 .
the kite was elongated to the back and a reflex
was added to this part to have some extra pitch materials can be used for the kite. The skin
stability (Fig. 7e). In flight the central section of of the pneumatic mcture (tubes and struts)
the sail bulges which generates a keel for is made of Icarex, a rip-stop polyester kite
directional stability (similar to a Rogallo wing).
fabric (34 gm -2 ) and the lifting surface of
In this way the functions of the canard wing were
integrated in the flying wing design. the kite (sail) is made of Cuben Fiber, a
Dyneema fibre reinforced polyester film (21
gm -2 ). A lighter variant of Cuben Fiber (11
3.2. 11 m2 prototype gm -2 ) is used as reinforcement for the
bigger diameter tubes. Heptax, an
The latest Tensairity kite prototype has a span aluminium coated laminate designed for
of 7.8 m and a projected area of 11 m2 (Figs. 8 helium balloons (26 gm -2 ) is used for the
and 9). It is quite slender for a kite with a bladders while carbon fibre pultrusions (8
projected aspect ratio of about 5.5. The bridle is mm diameter tubes with 1 mm wall
only connected at two points to the centre strut. thickness for the main spar and centre strut
and 4 mm diameter rods for the other
With a minimal weight of about 2.5 kg it is
struts) are used as compres-
designed to generate an ultimate lift of a 1000
sion elements. The tension elements are
web N.in The structure consists of one main
composed of two 500 kg Dyneema lines.
Tensairity spar with span-wise direction to take The tips of the wing and the front of the
up the bending load and several Tensairity struts nose are unsupported by Tensairity to have
in chord direction to tension the lifting surface. a soft zone in case of a rough landing.
The centre strut transfers the lift load to the
The structure was subjected to a load
bridle. The dihedral of the The wing is 150 which test to confirm the structural reliability. The
is low for a kite but high for an airplane. sweep of set up of the test was very similar to the one
the main spar is 80. The effective sweep is almost shown in Fig. 4. The wing was suspended on
neutral due to the large chord in the centre section 8 unevenly spaced positions by a
of the wing. The different airfoils also give the whippletree system, which approximated the
wing a small effective twist. All airfoils are based loads Of an elliptical lift distribution. The
on the NACA 4-series as they are suitable for load was applied at the bridle at the centre
turbulent flow. The reflex of the centre airfoil is with lead weights. The load deflection curve
achieved by adding an extra section to the is shown in Fig. 10 for an internal pressure of
0.07 x 105 Nm¯2 . The deflection is given as
existing airfoil of the canard kite (Fig. 7d). The
the difference between the deflection of the
airfoils have a thickness of to be able to have c
entre and the tips. The test was stopped at a
large diameter tubes and a high web to reduce the load of 700 N to prevent damage of the kite.
forces in the tension and The load deflection curve is in this load range
very linear as expected from the tests on the
0.05-0.1 x 105 N m-2 and the low wing loading straight and curved web-Tensairity models
very lightweight (Fig. 5). The tip deflection at 700 N is about
750 mm. The load-deflection curve starts at an with F being the force on the line. The
initial load Of 100 N. This initial load was lift of the kite Lk is defined as
necessary to tension all lines of the Whippletree
system. The analytical model (Eq. (6)) predicts a Lk = sinßo . F + W
deformation at 700 N of 510 mm, with = 27.2, where W is the weight of the kite. The
EcAc = 2.75 x 106 N, = 9.75 x 104 N, 100 N and ratio of lift over drag of the kite L/D is
L/2 = x = 3.525 m. Although the model is not given by
very suitable in case of the kite, which has an elli
ptical lift distribution and a much more
complex shape (main Tensairity girder has
sweep and twist) it still provides a first esti mate With CDI = 1.2 and d, l, W, p given, the
of the stiffness and deflection. measurement of F, V and allows to
determine Dk, Lk and finally L/D.
Flight tests The measured data for a typical
test run are shown in Fig. 12. In this
TO investigate the flight performance of flight test the weight of the kite was
the kite, tow test were made on two airstrips, increased to 3.6 kg due to additional
the military airstrip in Dübendorf and the measurement equipment and extra
for
mer military airstrip in St. Stephan, both in battens between the struts to
Switzerland. The kite Was fixed with a line of 54 improve the shape of the sail. Rather
m length and a diameter of 1.3 mm On a car steady flight conditions were
and towed on the airstrip for a distance up to obtained between 60 and 90 s with a
1000 m. velocity of about 7 m/s and a line
load of about SO N. During this flight,
the angle of attack was optimized in
order to make the kite fly as high as
ßoé
possible. The line angle reaches
values up to about 71 0 demonstrating
the potential of the kite for high
altitude flights.
Given the projected wing area S of
the kite. the drag coeffcient of the
kite (Cm) and the lift coefficient of
the kite (CLk) can then be calculated
by means of
Fig. ll. Schematic representation of the forces at the kite
(top) and at the ground attachment point of the line
(bottom). (12)

The wind speed was ideally almost zero

(13)
during these tests. The following
parameters were measured during ypV2 . S
these tests: line angle at the tow car, The values of LID, CDk and CLk are plotted in
line force at the car, and speed and Fig. 13 for the period between 60 and 90 s of
direction of the airflow relative to the
the test shown in Fig. 12. The L/D ratio
moving car. From these flight tests an
estimate of the effective lift coefficient
and lift/drag could be made. Due to the
short length of the line, its weight can
be neglected and the line is almost
straight 120]. The drag of the line DI,
which is small compared to the drag of
the kite, can thus be approximated by:

DI cm • -pv 2 .d . sinßl .1 (7)

with Cm the drag coefficient of the line, p the
density of the air, V the velocity of the air, d
the diameter of the line, '31 the line angle at
ground and I the length of the line. The drag
of the kite Dk and the angle at the top of the
line are given by (Fig. 11)

Dk = cosßl • F - DI (8)
Ho = cos 1
562
J.C.M. nrcucr, R". I.uchslngcr/Acmspacc Scicncc ond Technology 14 (2010) 557-563

100

0.3

90

20 30 40 90 1
00

Time (s) 100

Fig. 12. Experimental data of a tow test: the line load. the velocity and the line angle at the ground attachment point are given as a function of time.
60 65 70 75 80 almost no lift. The average cLk was
90 about 0.35 while about 0.6 was
expected 1141. But the L/D value of
the Tensairity kite is still much better
than a commercial Delta-kite we
have tested. This kite with 19ft span
and a weight of 2.9 kg from Premier
60 65 70 75 80 Kites reached L/D values of about
90 2.5-3, The Delta kite could also not
0.6 withstand wind velocities of more
than 15 m/s (plastic deformation of
the aluminium connection pieces of
the spars and aerodynamic
instability), while the Tensairity kite
60 65 70 75 80 had no problems at such speed with
90 similar line loads. For the Tensairity
Time (s) kite better values of the L/D are
expected if more attention is given
Fig- 13. Calculated coefficients from the
experimental data of fig. 12: Lift over drag L/D.
to the sail design and the trailing
drag coefficient of the kite cDk and lift coefficient edge tension. This will improve the
of the kite CLk are given as a funcuon of time. effective lift coefficient and the LID.
For a relatively simple single skin sail
wing like the Tensairity kite it should
value is about 5 in the period of steady be possible to reach L/D values of 10
flight. This is a bit lower than expected while double skin sail wings might
as an L/D value of 10 was reported in a reach 20 or higher [141.
comparable sail wing 1141. Probably,
In separate tests, the 11 m2 Tensairity kite
the difference is due to the lack of was flown in the wind with an anchored
tension winch. These tests demonstrated the
in the trailing edge of the sail, which goodnatured behaviour of the kite. It was
bulges between the struts, reduces the flown up to 2900 m (970 m over ground)
local angle of attack and thus generates
near Axalp in the military airspace of Meiringen,
Switzerland on September 4th, 2009. During
these flights a GPS measured the altitude and a
relieve valve together with a small pump
regulated the pressure of the Tensairity
structure.

5. Conclusions

Tensairity is a new light-weight structural

concept The synergetic combination of an
airbeam with cables and struts increases the
stiffness and buckling load of an inflatable
structure with the same internal pressure by a
factors 3 and 4 respectively by adding only 16%
to the mass of the airbeam. The Tensairity
concept can be directly adapted to inflatable
wing structures. To this end, curved web-
Tensairity girders were investigated allowing for
sweep, dihedral and twist of the wing.
Experimental investigations show that a small
curvature of the web-Tensairity girder does not
deteriorate the performance compared to
straight girders. As a first a single applica-line
tion, a Tensairity kite with 8 m span flying stable
on better than was built and tested. The
Tensairity kite performed is still commercially
available Delta kite. We expect that there big
potential to further enhance the performance of
the Tensair- ity kite by an improved tailoring of
the wing. The aerodynamic
'-CM. Ere-ucr. RH. I-uchslnger / Aerospocc Science and Technology 14 (2010) 557-563 563

and structural performance. the low weight. NASA langley Res. Center The Sci. and Technol. of
the crash resistance together with the small Low speed and Motoriess Flight. 1979, PL 1, pp. 155-
176.
storage volume makc the Tensairity wing not 1151 RK. Norris, W.J. Pulliam. Historical perspective on
only interesting for kite applications but also inflatable wing structures. in: 50th
for UAVs. hang gliders and ultra light aircraft AIM/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural
Dynamics and Materials Conference. Palm Springs.
California, AlAA-2009-2145. 2009.
Acknowledgements 1161 W.J. Ockels, tÆddermill. a novel concept to exploit the
energy in the airspace. Aircraft Design 4 (2) (2001) 81-97.
117) Paresev. the Paraglider Research Vehicle,
The authors would like to thank Thomas http://wwwenasa.gov/centers/dryden/
about/OrganizationsrrechnoIogy/Facts/TF-2004-09-
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