Tear propagation behavior with a novel analytical model on envelope material

To investigate the engineering application of a new stratospheric airship envelope material called Uretek-3216LV, the tearing behavior of envelope material was studied. The classical stress tearing models have high accuracy for small crack size, but the accuracy of large crack size prediction is poor for the envelope material. In this paper, a new stress analytical model was developed to evaluate the tear propagation behavior of envelope materials under central tearing tests. In the model, a new stress concentration distribution function near the crack tips was introduced to improve the accuracy of the predicting tearing model. The new model has verified by center tearing tests with high accuracy under small cracks and large cracks. Therefore, the new analytical model can be used for engineering design of envelope material.