Lift Capacity of a Helium Balloon

by Austin Atkins

Submitted : Spring 2010

The purpose of the Lift Capacity of Helium Balloon project was to calculate the payload mass of a hot air balloon filled with helium gas. I was given spreadsheet with coordinate points on the X,Y plane that represented an arc considered to be half of the hot air balloon. There were two main steps to finding the payload mass, the first step was to find the volume of the hot air balloon using the disk method, and the second step was to find the surface area of the hot air balloon using the arc length formula. Once these results were obtained it was necessary to find the mass of the helium being used, the mass of the air displaced, and finally the mass of the balloon material. After these calculations were performed were found, the payload mass of the hot air balloon was found to be 114.05 Kg.

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