Submarine Yacht project

The more I think about your little submarine (I think if it as a "cementosphere", even though it's an ellipsoid. It makes me think of the orginal Bathisphere) the more I like it.

What would be really cool though, would be if it could be transparent. The walls of your sub are 18cm thick, right? Would it be possible to build an equivelant hull out of something transparent, like a plastic, glass, or pyrex? I imagine that 18cm of pyrex would hold a lot of pressure, particularly if there was some kind of reinforcement running through it (I'm picturing those windows that you see in American high schools with the 2cm grid of fibers inbedded in them so they don't get broken).

What is "slipping cost"?

 

deep diving submarine alternative materials

Hello Joe,
concrete as hull material and a series of spheres in a 2 hull concept might be a way how a independent submarine (no mothership) could reach a depth that comes close to average ocean depth. I discussed this matter with Carsten in Germany (the Guy who builds the merlin sub) a couple of months agro.

Now what concerns trieste, the first intent for deep diving was a steel sphere on a steel cable (bebe) which is dangerous as the steel sphere is heavier than water and sinks if cable breaks. So Piccard added a big gasoline tank on top to the concept that gives the sphere additional float to get rid of the cable.

Triestes steel sphere passenger compartment had 2m diameter and was made in Germany by Krupp in the same installations where the monstercanons bertha and dora where built - it is (still) the biggest installation for the biggest single pieces of steel in the world. They formed it by hammering a 2m red hot steel block and then machining it down to final half sphere shape - glueing 2 half spheres and a central ring together. - imagine the cost -

You can form a 2m concrete shpere in your garage with any wallthickness - no Krupp with mega installations needed. That is a BIG difference in cost. You also can form a 5m sphere - not even Krupp can do this in steel.

It is clear that massive steel has a higher pressure resistance than concrete.
So a concrete sphere will not go down to 11.000m like trieste did but you may go well below thousand meters and can possibly reach ocean floor outside submarine cañons.

I am not very optimistic of forming something similar out of acrylic as this is a difficult material with 10% shrinking - heat processing after each machining step etc... have never seen piezes of glass except a few millimeter thick nor in pyrex.... Honestly the only construction material i know where massive pieces of 20 cm thickness and far more are formed sucessfully evry single day all over the world is concrete.

The idea of glass with wire grid for submarines is a thing i would not recommend...
To get a good idea what submarine viewports should be made of and what is state of the arte read (Jerry D. Stachiw) and (http://www.psubs.org/).

What i want to say with "slipping cost" is: Depending on the material of which your yacht is made you have to pay whenever it must be taken out of water for painting, repair, check. In a wooden yacht this is a big MAYOR cost as you take it out at least once a year paying for crane, for using shipyard installation ect...

A concrete submarine hull is supposed to stay unaltered in water similar like a tunnel or a bridge fundamentation - for decades - centuries... this is a big cost benefit compared to other materials...

Just put a bouy and let it hang there as i did summer, winter, year after year - scrap the algea is all you need do - see:





Kindest Regards,
W Ellmer

 

You are right of course; I was just admiring the decks of the underwater buses and ability to look out.

I see that your design has it's own beauty and it also has side view ports which will help it sell.

I'm not sure how much drag a deck will have, nor how having a flat surface so near a potentially turbulent surface will affect handling and sea keeping.

Any observations I may have are distant ones and somewhat removed from engineering.

 

That site has a nice gallery page:
http://www.psubs.org/pic/pic.html

 

What a shame... floating around the keys or Hawaiian islands in a clear bubble really sounded nice.

 

submarine yacht deck, viewports

Hello kach22i,

A deck is a fine thing on a big submarine so you can sit on deck have table and chairs on deck in harbour - maybe a party.

On my 9m submarine a deck would be a surface of 2x1m before and aft of the tower - just enough to stand on - nothing for a real use - and a additional surface you have to scrap birdshit off when boat is hanging on its bouy.



You can´t use any deck in any submarine in open ocean as waves will wash over it - this is why submarines have a tower. If you want a deck usable in open water you need a lot of freebord and this is a lot of additional drag. See (ussubmarines.com) - in fact you need to extend the tower to the whole sub.
Anyhow if you plan a lot of activity on deck and are willing to accept drag it can be a solution.

What speaks against the concept of enourmous curved acrylc surfaces like in a tourist sub is cost. Viewports only can take 10.000 dive cycles then must be replaced. It is ok if you have a tourist sub you earn money with each dive. If you dive 10 times a day you have to rebuild whole ship after 3 years. This may work for a tourist bus application - a 3 years livetime is prohibitive for a yacht.

This must be why ussubmarines 65m megayacht submarine has not yet been realized - tremendously expensive and rebuild all acrylic surfaces - after 3 years...this is too much.

In my concept (www.tolimared.com/submarine) you have 4 viewports of 50 cm diameter. Those are disc shapes which take more loadcycles than domes.
You also can change them at reasonable cost - even without taking the submarine out of water.

This gives you enough light inside see:


You also have a fine view of underwaterworld if you bring your face close all your angle of view is covered by the viewport.



So limiting the number of viewports and stay with flat disc shape instead of dome is a key factor for a reasonable life span and a reasonable cost in a submarine yacht.

Kindest Regards,
W Ellmer

 

You can get half spheres of acrylic up to 6 foot diameter - this is bringing acrylic domes to the limit - Deep Rover from phil nyutten - is such a submarine concept floating around in a bubble - unfortunatly needs a big mothership - and replace your bubble after 10.000 dive cycles ...

Kindest Regards
W Ellmer

 

G'day Wellmer

Being a marketing type of indervidual, I was wondering as you seem to want to market this design.

What is your "target" clientelle. ie What type of person do you invisage will purchase a submarine and what consumer benefits are there in owning one.

In short who would want one and what would they do with it?

Poida

 

concrete submarine yacht possible market segments

Hello Poida


1) Submarine Weekend Yachting

smaller submarine yachts like mine at (http://tolimared.com/submarine) for weekend yachting
- low building cost
- low maintainance cost
- easy parking on a buoy - no harbour necessary - can be closed completly no vigilance necessary.

2) Submarine Live Aboard

bigger yachts - living in a comfortable ambient.
- no wave action
- no seasickness
- no need of hurricane save harbour
- fine climate as water filters temperature extremes

3) Salvatage ROV deployment

ROV Deployment from Surface ship is risky due to wave action - loss due to waiting for better weather.
Moving Ship cuts cable. In a Sub you have a calm environment to send out ROV under any conditions.

4) Habitats
Spheres of dozends of meters of diameter are possible in concrete.

5) Tourist submarines will be hard to classifie as there are no concrete classification rules for concrete tourist submarines.

Kindest Regards,
W.Ellmer

 

Nice work

Wilfried what are your future planes for your next project? I really like the concrete concept, so what are your ideas for your long range cruiser? I like the idea of traveling the world with something like this. I like the idea of sitting under the weather outside of harbors so you can anchor anywhere and sleep in peace. Have you thought of a way to travel on diesel engines in rough water without the pressure differences from the snorkle tube. And finally can you go into more detail how you built your hull or tell me websites to go to learn about the technique? Thank you for any response and good luck with your future projects. Steve

 

concrete submarine yacht, plans, markets,

Hello Steve,

Thanks a lot for your kind words about the concrete submarine yacht project.
What is next to get this project afloat is a long range submarine cruiser with concrete hull. I agree with you on that. To get the concept moved you need something like a marketing campain. What would be a better marketing than to cruise with a submarine yacht from marina to marina and show people how that concept works. I had crowds of people on rainy days on a alpine lake - anybody wantet to get into the submarine - imagine the crowd on a sunny day in miami beach...florida keys...you would get a equivalent of millions in free publicity.

Once the yacht community understands that submarine yachting is an option - not only for billionairs - but can be very affordable - even more economic in terms of building and maintainance cost than a motor or sailing yacht - people will focus on the aproach of submarine live aboard with those mayor advantages like no wave action and weather safety.
Sitting under weather outside the harbour sparing marina fees, having a nice quiet dinner watching fish - no conern about pirates - no watch necessary - go asleep - let a snorkel light blink - this is fine yachting it will succeed if you offer a real option to get there.

Today yachting community is driven by hurrican season, need of safe harbours and marina costs. The kind of autonomy that a submarine yacht can offer would be highly apreciated. Beside that - if you have a small submarine yacht and you steal the show, from the Megayachts in any harbour. So there is a reason of money a reason of comfort and a reason of ego to do it.

The question of the pressure surges during snorkeling comes from WW2 submarines. Those submarines where built that way that the diesel engine sucked the air from the inside of the boat and the negative pressure in the hull caused air to enter trough the Snorkel. This worked fine until the boat got a little too deep and the automatic snorkel valve closed to avoid water comming in trough the Snorkel.
The diesel keeps sucking and creates a momentaneous underpressure in the sub that causes ears and eyes of the crew almost pop out...you can avoid this in having a long snorkel mast that stays way above the waves - thing the WW2 subs could not do because the snorkel mast causes a big radar echo that is very visible - so they had to keep their snorkel end very close to the waves - just a few centimeters above the surface. - so this pressure surges are a question of desperate war tactics to avoid detection more than a tecnical problem of snorkeling. in a submarine yacht you keep your snorkel high above the waves like a flagmast an put a diveflag on it so anybody can see you. You even should opt for a 2 snorkel solution as i had in my test project ( http://tolimared.com/submarine ) this gives you a natural air flow trough the submarine on anchorplace that keeps ambient fine and dry.

Forming of a concrete submarine hull is basicly a forming process with a moving ring shape mold similar to the ones used in toronto TV tower tunnel building etc...forming is the most tricky part - it took me a while to figure out a good method. I will share those details in a project. Please contact me privatly...

Kindest Regards,

Wilfried

 

How about a floating snorkel attached to the sub via a flexible and streachable hose (I'm picturing something like the coiled hoses used by auto painting bussinesses, only larger).

Then you wouldn't have to worry about going too deep, or having the snorkel stick up like a flag on a kid's go-cart

 

submarine yacht floating snorkel

Hello Joe,
Floating snorkel is fine concept i tested it on my submarine yacht. I used a PVC tube of 10cm diameter. You can make it quite long 30m if you need and just pull it behind your sub. As concrete submarines are little compressible you can ballance them easyly at any depth which means you can hang your sub at any depth in a stable floating position using only the displacement of the tube to stabilize the submarine. This works fine and would be a good thing at ocean passages you keep the boat at 20m below the big waves and still in snorkel mode.

Kindest Regards,
W.Ellmer

 

Thank you for your last reply. Have you thought of building another sub to lower to great depths to test out when the hull fails. Maybe without windows. Would really like to see more interior pictures and of construction. Steve

 

UPDATE: 02/21/07

How to put surface seats/deck on round submarine.
http://flickr.com/photos/girl-ferrets/archives/date-posted/2006/09/06/