Could variants of hoop stress also apply to soft kites?

[PierreB]

Concerning scalability, I don’t think there is a major difference between single skin kites and ram kites.

@rschmehl

So, a slightly steeper increase of mass than linear should be expected. But still, this is far from a square-cube law.

@PierreB

@rschmehl

From Paulig et al (2013) we know

The specific weight of 160 to 320 m2 kites is around 0.5–0.6 kg/m2

And much less for a 1 m² powerkite.

It’s just a hypothesis on my part, but perhaps the scalability curve could look like an asymptote? A little more than linear at the beginning, and much more than linear at the end.

A blimp (flexible airship) becomes increasingly heavy as he grows. “Why Blimp Technology Doesn’t Scale Up Well” could perhaps apply to soft kites.