Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Topic change

[MerlinSub@t-online.de (Carsten Standfuß)]

CWall@swri.edu schrieb:
> 
> Ed said:
> I think a lot of discussion is going on concerning something that is WAY
> OUT of our league. I thought this was a Personal Sub list to enhance our
> potential and offer advice to built our own PSUB. I honestly don't
> envision any of us building a flying sub.
> 
> I agree with Stan - "To me the flying sub is SiFi, like in Voyage to the
> Bottom of the Sea. 2 different technologies that don t fit together."
> 
> *******************************************************************************
> *******
> 
> Yeah, I'd have to agree.  After 35 years of experimental aviation, if someone
> put a gun to my head and said "build a flying submarine", I'd just take a
> two-seat Goodyear Inflatoplane and use the passenger weight for a skeleton
> chassis and electric propulsion system and be done with it. But it would be a
> lousy submarine from a mediocre airplane....and who wants to waste their time?
> 
> *******************************************************************************
> 
> He's a new topic:  my dry sub design, as far as I've gotten (after a couple
> hundred hours of design tradeoff studies) is a steel one-man cruising sub,
> optimized for long range on the surface and shallow dives- mostly 30ft and
> less.
> 
> Here's the innovation (or at least I think it is, simply because I haven't
> heard of anyone else suggesting it):   Propane is used for both fuel and
> ballast blow.
> 
> All propane plumbing is external to the pressure hull.  The only thing
> penetrating the P-hull are rotating valve actuators, steering linkages, and the
>  prop shaft.
> 

The engine is air- or water- cooled ? 

Is there a tight bulkhead between the 
engine room and your compartment ? 
Vapour and smell is a big problem for small
one and twoman submarines with cumbustion engines. 

> The drive is parallel hybrid, like a normal sub, but the carburetor for the
> Honda 5hp long life horizontal shaft engine is at the top of the snorkel, again
>  so that no pressurized propane enters the P-hull.   Propane used to blow the
> ballast tanks is not lost but can be delivered to the engine for use as fuel
> when on the surface.
> 
The carburetor is at the end of the snorkel ? How long is the snorkel ? 

> Additional refinements may include pneumatic  compounding (a reciprocating
> motor used to extract the energy from the pressurized propane before delivery
> to the engine and connected shaft-to-shaft, allowing the Honda to be run
> extremely lean for increased range) and exhaust turbo-compounding for
> additional battery charging.

Okay - most fuel internal combustion engines have a low effective 
everything top get a higher output will help. 
> 
> The design goals are: 200 miles of surface range, 2 miles submerged range, and
> room to lay down and sleep.  I think I can get this accomplished in a boat
> roughly 18 ft long, and it must be trailerable behind my little Isuzu pickup.
>  (This really depends of what steel I can get my hands on.)   I don't
> contemplate wanting to go below 100 ft, so a 250 ft redline depth seems
> appropriate.  I would anticipate most dives to be shallower than 30 ft.

200 miles at about 4 knots ? 200/4 = 50 hours ? 

> 
> The hull would be most likely fabricated from a section of steel tube 28 to 30
> inches in diameter, perhaps more, with the pressure section absolutely round
> but the ends darted and drawn to get a good "guppy" shape.   (Sort of like a
> moderated sea kayak- I want to make way on the surface even if there are some
> swells...)   Fore and aft free-flooding ballast tanks would enclose the propane
>  tanks and trim tanks, so that propane leaks would be captured, and side
> flooding ballast tanks would add bouyancy- syntactic foam would be used to get
> nearly neutral trim with ALL ballast flooded.   A substantial droppable keel
> and fore and aft shot hoppers would then get you to the surface if you ran out
> of propane or went below the depth where the 90psi blow was inadequate.
> 

Syntactic foam on a shallow water sub with a small thickness pressure
hull ?
Do you have made a weight calculation? Presssure proof syntactic foam is
expensive
here. For and aft ballast tanks and for and aft trimm tanks and side
tanks. 
Seems a little overshoot for me. Just one forward and aft ballast tank
or 
side tanks and one or two regulator for a sub in this size seems okay. 
But the side tanks will increase your hull resistance. How you want to 
handle the trimm and regulator tanks - also with propane ? 

Have you ever seen a drawing or picture of a Marlin S 101 or 102 ? 
I will send you a drawing sketch of a Marlin two person diesel sub 
if you want. 

Carsten - and in my opinion a flysub will work - but as an real poor 
sub and also a poor plane. A big aircraft of flyboat typ with a hangar
and bottom door for the sub will be the much better and - expensive
solution. 
They built one unit with a Biber inside at 1944 - but the engines
of the flyboat were destroyed during an american air-raid at
Schweinsfurt
during the overhold-time (of the engines) for the mission. 
Luck for the Suez Channel.. 

> I've been doing cardboard models to get the geometry from straight tubing with
> cuts and welds, and I've been very pleased with the shapes I've been able to
> generate.  I have some other projects ahead of this one, but I have a feeling
> this one has life to it.
> 
> Craig Wall