Submarine Project

Wellmer.
Im not a boat designer, nor am I a NA. However I did work for WHOI and I was trained as pilot on Alvin and I did do 10 dives, most to well over 1000 Meters. Im certain Im not qualified to ask but I do have some questions.

1. To what pressure do you engineer your through hull fittings?
2. Who and how often are they inspected?
3. How do you supply enough air to keep your diesel engine running when in snorkle mode?
4. How do you dissapate the ambient heat from the engine, when on surface and at snorkle?
5. When at snorkle or at surface how do you insure that water dosnt back flood your engine exhaust and air intake?
6. How much relative pressure can these deices take?
7. How do you deal with CO2 buildup?
8. How do you deal with condensation buildup?
9. Do you have a way to lose ballast if you lose electrical power?
10 How long will your electrical power last at cruise?
11. How do you deal with hydrogen buildup in your electrical system?

I checked your website and I didnt find any of these item addressed.

K9

 

1) any fitting should be engineered to hold (at least) same pressure as the hull itself
2) Inspect frequently, inspect and change viewports after 10.000 cycles. Test dive unmanned frequently 1:2 or 1:3
3) snorkel see ww2 solutions...
4) 2 circuit cooling heat exchanger
5) see ww2 intake protectors
6) all device should be able to go to same pressure as hull
7) if you have 200.000l atmosphere critical point comes after - how many hours - (person takes 8l/minute) - you do the math...have some pellets for emergency - will not need them in normal yachting mode.
8) see website (condensation is problem in steel hulls or small boats as alvin due to h20 in breath - prototype hull was condensation free.
9) not my perfered method - prefer saddle tank blow out - less mecanics that rott in saltwater - disadvantage does not work so well in depth...
10) not a fan of big battery banks - costly and dangerous as hell...nasty accidents - see website - prefered method is drifting with small battery...or tandem solutions...skip battery bank.
11) one of the reasons why not fan of battery banks - method of choice to stay on safe side is - like in yachts - ventilation of battery compartments...gas detector...H2 build up is in loading phase this is on surface generally well ventilated -

Kindest Regards,
Wil

 

Ok there are some answers there.

On the Snorkle see WWII...I would suggest to you that you go back and re-read about the snorkles.....They were only effective in sea states less then 1 meter. This is why Germany did not put them on the typw IXC and the Type XXI.

On the condensation buildup. I dont care if your sub is made out of marshmellows. My breath and yours will allways have condensation as well as the fact that most ocean air is at 90%+ humidity. Cold water and warm engine will definately make condensation. I would recommend you put a bit more thought into this.

I guess I dont follow your engine cooling system. Is the engine completely inclosed with a sea water cooling system cooling the engine compartment?

I get your safty ballast system. I dissagree with the choice, but thats an opinion. Yours will work provided you dont accidentally sink below your ability to blow your tanks. Since your talking about drifting I assume you will have floodable ballast tanks as opposed to nutral bouncy, that has to be "driven" underwater. Problem here is water salinity, you will need a very good computer program constantly adjusting ballast, to maintain nutral bouncy, otherwise you will get a chance to test your safty ballast device. I did a dive on a rainy day once. I ballasted for for what I thought was the correct salinity, however I had not noticed that it had been raining all morning. I was at 150 meters before I could get alvin to stop sinking. Quiet scary.

Small batts. I see your thinking, however dont you worry that your going to severly limit your subsurface time without largeer banks of batts? On this subject, you will need 1 Pound of CO2 scrubbing pellets per person per 4 hours. Now you can wait untill the CO2 is at 6-8% before you use them, but, once it gets bad in the sub and the condensation level and humidity is about 95% you will find that this formula will only keep you at the 6-8% CO2, Its a myth to think that the pellets will bring you back to 0-3% CO2. It wont happen I dont care what the manufacture has told you.

Just for the record I like the idea of civillian subs. I dont think they will replace cruising yachts. Its hard to compete with Wind for a power source.

 

Two questions I ask - get no answers!
How are you deploying the anchors?
Who are your insurers?
Thats two - I look forward to hearing and seeing some actual information.
And - where are pictures of prototype Ben Franklin?

 

Honestly i am not very expert on IXC and the Type XXI boats - i have heard that snorkeling did not work out very well for them for a couple of reasons - mostly military ones - left a big radar sign and the boat vulnerable to bombing, also those boats where not very good in holding snorkel depth - the famous ear poping story... As pilot of ALVIN you will agree that submarine is not submarine and ALVIN behaves in many ways different than nuke boats or ww2 boats do - so if snorkeling did not work out for them - maybe - it workes very well for a submarine yacht of the configuration i tested.

Condensation build up - i put a lot of thought in that - in fact i already purchased insulation foam when i found that it was not necessary. May it be the specific temperature conduction of concrete versus steel, the effectivness of ventilation - i have not made a scientific study on that condensation drops simply did not appear hull stayed dry - surprising - for me too - but a fact.

Saddle tanks are for emergency only - rest of gas in the tanks would ruin stable buoyancy.

I apreciate your decription of ALVINS buoyancy behavior - mine is obviously a quite different boat...had no scary situations at all.

A person exhales 1kg (say 1m3) of CO2 per day if you have a athmosphere volume of 200 m3 how many hours (days) do you need to get critical 8%... you make the math... if you do not plan to stay down several days without venting - you will not come near to critical so spare the pellets... This is different in ALVIN (how many m3 athmosphere does it contain ?)

If you move with current (BEN FRANKLIN) you will not need a lot of battery.

I like wind - a tandem version with a surface vehicle with wind turbine could be a favorite for the green minded drifter.

Kindest Regards,
Wil

 

I question both of our opinions ( and just like anal orifices, everone has one), does that make me better? And it is not a generalization, it is my experience.

As I said, my experience, my government sevice, your experiences, the government offices you dealt with, it is not my place to make excuses for other people in government so YMMV.

The supposition you make is incorrect, there are many (at least the ones I know of in the USA) government special projects that have no civilian counterparts. Maybe in somewhere else, all military systems are bought from private contractors, but not in the USA. There are some very neat systems that are all "in house".

Again, it is strange to me that you would have a civilian maintaining a system that "has to work" all the time. Maybe that's why AUS ended up with the Collins class SS's fire control system, and Canada with the problems they have had. As I recall, they both "got what they'd paid for", and late also.

For the record, I was not saying the the government is perfect, but I know that the motivation is different. In my office, the average experience in deep submergence systems is over 20 years. We have seen a lot of commerical units come and go, and they still cannot produce systems that have the reliability and schedule performace that we need to deliver to the fleet, and that we have been delivering. Yes, we cost more in the balance sheet, but we put in costs that we know are going to be needed, rather than low bid and try to make it up on the change orders. Must work... first time out of the box... because you only get one chance... is an expensive proposition that most civilian contractors will not even bid on because of the penalty clauses you mention. That leaves it up to the government orginizations, or you don't even attempt it. The commerical world doesn't use something called the US Navy Air Diving Tables because it is a poor substitute for what they could do.

 

Jehardiamn -
"Again, it is strange to me that you would have a civilian maintaining a system that "has to work" all the time"

Tenix Defense Industries maintains the ANZAC class frigates (all 10 of them for Australia and NZ) that were delivered, on time, on budget and all 5 major systems (from propulsion to air conditioning) have to have around 92% "up time" or major fines kick in.

I thnk you will find very few naval systems anywhere that dont rely on civilian contractors, as very few governments own their own factories.

 

Anchor - never could measure more than 1kp of force on the anchor line when testing my prototype - asume that this has to do with small surfaces exposed to wind forces . So anchor was a very relaxed theme - i had a light mooring and a handanchor to deploy from sail - again - handling of a submarine yacht is VERY different to handling of a sailing yacht where anchor manouver and handling heavy anchors is a major concern. Anyhow if a owner wishes it - putting a heavy anchor sistem on a submarine yacht is not rocket science either - needs a bit superstructure for handling i agree with you. In my test version i was more interested in whale shape and submarine testing than in heavy anchor gear testing...honestly found anchoring too simple to dedicate a lot of investigation to it...a kilopond of force is in your small finger...i know there might be a theoretical situation...where you need....just did not happen.

Simply you will not get insurance for a concrete submarine until you rewrite ABS - so follow Phil Nuyttens advice - if you don´t plan to rent it to navy forget ABS ...

Photos Ben Franklin
http://www.sub-find.com/historical.htm

Kindest Regards,
Wil

 

My office rejected concrete for pressure hulls in the late 1960's after farbication of deep submergence test samples. The documented problems were the lack of ability to have repeatable NDT indications prior to failure and poor ability to do modifications on the fabricated structure. You do have the same problems (as technology in those fields is not sufficiently advanced since then, we do 5 year reviews), but you are willing to accept the risk. We can not with the condition and limits we operate under. In my opinon, concrete is perfectly acceptable for unmanned use, where failure is an accaptable option. I would not risk it for a manned submersible.

Every engineer has a different comfort zone based upon their experience. One is not necissarily better, just different.

 

LOL....

I am NOT a public servant....I am a public master....do as I say....and like it!

In a larger sense though, there are those of us who serve the "public good" without an inflated idea of our own worth. For myself, i'm not in this job for the ease of work, because it isn't; or the money I can make, because I can make more as a contractor; but I do it for the crew on the boat and the good of the country as I see it (at least that's the way I understand the oath I took). IMHO, if it was left up to the politicans and the contrators, there would be a lot more sailor's widows in the world, as the bottom line is is profit/loss, either political or money. I take precieved threats to "MY" ships and crews very personal and very seriously; just like I take wasting the taxpayers dollars seriously (i.e. a billion here a billion there and pretty soon your're talking real money). And that what it is really about, being true and loyal to the people that you make promises to. The sailors and the citizens.

 

Oh, I have no doubt that a civilian firm could make a ship deploy on schedule, after all, they make the busses run on time. The question I have is the wether the system actually works, as opposed to "meets all contractural requirements". This is a very fine line in deep submergence. I've personaly sat in meetings where that was what was trying to be pinned down...because you couldn't tell it from the "satisfactorily completed" testing. My grief is that I'm usualy brought in after all the schedule and money have been spent and we are given an "operational" system that we didn't want and have to field, often by totaly redesigning and rebuilding it. Operational money and aqusition money are two different pots, and often at odds about what is important and what is "successful". Testing a system 20 times to get it to pass once in an operational test, does not make it deployable.

 

Jerhardiman dose bring up an intresting topic on the concreate aspect. I used to own a ferro cement boat. As I understand, and I may be wrong here, cement/concreate will continu to harden forever, with its brittleness increasing yearly. Given the stress of submerging to 100 Feet often, have you looked into how many dives your hull can safely stand up to before the brittelness becomes a concern for failure? Also is there any way to test concrete/cement for this factor without it being destructive to the actuall hull?

 

Wil

Thank you for getting to my points.

Re -anchoring.
ALL submarines MUST have an anchor to be allowed to put to sea - and they deploy it through a hydrodynamically designed steel fitting (a real problem for a concrete submarine) not something done with superstructure. Sure, you only get small wind forces, but how about tremendous tidal and current forces (for a theoretical situation) , that can sweep you into some very bad places, like 3 million dollars worth of moored yachts for starters.

Re Insurance -
Jehardiamn has more adequately covered the risks associated with a concrete vessel, and of course NO ONE will insure the the BEN FRANKLIN because of the inherant risks to life, limbs and the chequebook.

So - about 2 weeks ago when I said that you are going to end up with 20 tons of concrete and say quarter of a million dollars of gear that
isnt going to be allowed into the open sea - I think I got it spot on!

You wont even be allowed to test it in the open sea, no matter how suicidal you may be feeling at the time, unless you want to sneak out past the coast guard, and risk serious legal trouble.

Its a doomed project I tell you .... doomed, doomed (eerie music and insane cackle)!

 

I apreciate your decription of ALVINS buoyancy behavior - mine is obviously a quite different boat...had no scary situations at all.

You have been testing in a fresh water lake correct?

Im just letting you know that salinity levels can vary drastically day to day hour to hour in the ocean and this WILL affect bouncy. Salinity will also differ at diffrent depths and will increase or decrease you rate of rise or sink. Ill see if I dont have my old tables laying around somehwere for you to look at. This will affect any vessel from just above nutral bouyancy to any level of neg bouyancy. The russians lost one of thier research subs to this ery factor. Dont underestimate the oceans ability to swallow you whole, anytime it likes.

 

Wellmer is in Columbia. I dont think the CG or the law is going to be a problem for him down there.