The Mathematics of Near-Space Ballooning

Image courtesy of http://space.1337arts.com

Our primary concern was having our capsule achieving a height of over 100,000 ft and then return to earth within the maximum amount of time our video camera could record (this turned out to be approximately 2.5 hours). As gas rises and the air pressure lowers, it expands, causing the balloon to inflate even more. Eventually, the helium will expand beyond the point that the balloon is able to stretch and it will burst, thus beginning the descent of the capsule. We knew that the more helium we use, the faster the balloon will rise. And we also knew that the more helium we use, the less room the gas will have to expand, causing it to burst sooner. And the sooner the balloon bursts, the lower the bursting height. Since we knew the approximate mass of our payload (1100 g) and our balloon (1000 g), as well as other attributes of the balloon courtesy of the Kaymont Website, we only needed to calculate the helium required to get us to 100,000 ft (a little under 31,000 m) in a decent amount of time.

Launch Volume
The volume of the balloon at the time of launch in order to reach over 31,000 m can be calculated with: V(L) = vb * e^(-1 * ba / adm) Where V(L) is the volume at launch, ba is the target burst altitude (in this case 31,000 m), adm is the Air Density Model value: 7238.30, vb is the volume at which the balloon will burst The burst volume of the balloon can be calculated with: vb = 4/3 * * ( db/2 )^3 where db is the diameter of the balloon at which it will burst, in this case 7.86 m So by calculating vb = 254.3 cu m, we then get V(L) = 3.51 cu m = 124 cu ft.

Free Lift
In order to calculate our ascent rate, and therefore the time until the balloon bursts, we first need to calculate the Free Lift, that is, the difference between the total lift provided by the balloon and gravitational pull on the mass of both the balloon and the capsule. The total lift of the balloon, known as the Gross Lift can be calculated as: L(g) = V(L) * ( d(air) d(he) ) Where L(g) is the gross lift, V(L) is the launch volume: 3.51 cu m d(air) is the density of air: 1.205 d(he) is the density of helium: 0.1786 So L(g) = 3.602. We can now use this to calculate the free lift: L(f) = ( L(g) (mb + mp)/1000 ) * a(g) Where L(f) is the free lift, L(g) is the gross lift: 3.602 mb is the mass of the balloon: 1000 g mp is the mass of the payload: 1100 g a(g) is gravitational acceleration: 9.80665 Plugging in these values gives us a free lift of L(f) = 14.73

Ascent Rate and Time to Burst

To calculate our ascent rate, we use the following: s = ( L(f) /( 0.5 * cd * a(L) * d(air)) ) Where s is the speed of ascent, L(f) is the free lift: 14.73 cd is the coefficient of drag of the balloon, in this case: 0.3 a(L) is the surface area of the balloon at launch, which is simply calculated from the launch volume, V(L) and is: 2.79 sq m d(air) is the density of air: 1.205 Plugging in the values, we see s = 5.40 m/s = 19.44 km /h With this, We can calculate that the time until the balloon bursts is 5,741 s, or approximately 1 hour, 35 minutes. This would give us more