Acrylic Hull for Underwater Vessel

Thickness of the shell is a function of the strength of the material and the immersion depth.

Thank you, but we are more concerned with finding a manufacturer than the actual thickness. They should be able to engineer the product. Does anyone know of a manufacturer? Skippy

ask Phil Nuytten of Nuytco Research Ltd.

the website is : http://www.nuytco.com/index.html

That sounds like an interesting project. A 13 metre submarine for fish viewing presumably.

How will you fix anything to the acrylic - drives, controls, seats etc?

In our experience acrylic is a poor material to work with as it is so brittle at low temperatures and will not bond easily.

Hugh Mattos

Chartered Engineer

I agree with Hugh. Polycarbonate is a better choice than acrylic and there must be even better and stronger plastics available for your project. Whatever the choice of materials, you are not going to get away cheap. Large diameter plastic pipe is not inexpensive. If this is a school project you might ask a manufacturer for donated material.

Polycarbonate is a reasonable choice.

Roughly calculated:

Seawater density 1050 Kg/m³

50m depth: 50 x 1050 x 10 = 525000 Pa water pressure

(OK g is taken 10)

A 2 meter cilinder gives a frontal pressure of 1.05 MPa (D x Pressure)

PC has a tensile strength of 62 MPa at yield (info General Electric)

Use 60 with a safety factor of 4 (you are going down with peope inside)

results in a wall thickness of 70mm, to be divided over the two sides;

My opinion: 35mm hull thickness is reasonable

Next step: stability analysis of the resulting tube (eigen frequency and eigen buckling) the length is a problem for me.

Better design would be a steel structure that takes the load and PC windows. It will give the passengers a better idea on the structural strength. And much easier to make and maintain.

Don't forget: bended PC or other materials will act as magnifiing glasses, doing strange things to the view from different places. The thicker the worse.

If you really want to do it, contact GE or Bayer, they will certainly help you out and know who can make these parts.

Gwen

By interesting coincidence the Global Spec newsletter has today an article which discusses a Bayer project for the motor industry:

Transparent Plastic Shows Off Concept Car

Here's a concept: transparent technology. Bayer MaterialScience and Swiss engineering specialists Esoro applied just that in creating the eXasis concept car. The "glass" car uses a see-through Makrolon® polycarbonate on the floor and body to expose the engine running on top of the transmission.

Maybe they could help?

Hugh Mattos

Chartered Engineer