Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] concrete submarine

[Michael Edwards <me@sustainkauai.org>]

Hi Brian:

Thanks for the suggestion. I am planning on making this a wet pressurized hull.
Very strange I'm sure. If I was going with a standard wet sub I would use fiberglass,
because of the lack of corrosion, weight, and my familiarity with it.

That said, I'm looking to try ferrocement on a hawaiian canoe hull 25' to 35' to try it out.
I've see a lot of amateur ferrocement built boats that bounced off of reefs and still made it home.

Best regards

Michael

Brian Cox wrote:

Hi Michael,        You could use a ferro-cement construction if your shell is not going to be under pressure.  Ferro-cement of 1" thickness will weigh approx 12 lbs per sq ft. Regards, Brian Cox

----- Original Message -----

From: Michael Edwards

To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org

Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 12:09 PM

Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] concrete submarine

 Greetings Wilfried:

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, I understand the size/weight issues. A am exploring the idea of a pressurized, wet sub.
The prone position is very uncomfortable, dry in gravity, but very doable floating.
I've spent thousand of hours underwater in this position. I don't need much over 2 hours duration.
My goal is to keep the trailer weight under 3 tons.

Any thoughts about using a high fly ash content to keep sea water out of the concrete,
and using galvanized or stainless to deal with corrosion?

Best regards

Michael
 

diagroto@ibague.cetcol.net.co wrote:

Hello Michael,

Yes, that is my approach too.
If you did a couple of tanks and test objects for pressure tests you will be
familiar enough with the material to make a sub that works.
My first was very small 2m long 70 cm diameter - 800kg - trailerabel (concrete)
BUT - you need a certain size to be comfortable enough inside to have a several
hours dive. As discussed by carsten it will be hard to combine trailerable
(small and light weight) with comfortable (certain space).
Subs are "heavy machines" by nature (below flotability) this means 1m cubic room
(very little to be comfortable)is 1 ton trailer weight (heavy for trailer).
So i ended up with a 9m 20ton sub comfortable inside, but far from trailerable.
If you need a real trailerable sub you might go for a wet sub only.

see:
http://imulead.com/sub.html

Greetings

Wilfried

Mensaje citado por: Michael Edwards <me@sustainkauai.org>:

> Greeting Subers, and hello Wilfried:
>
> I am very interested in concrete submarine technologies.
>
> I retired from 30+ years commercial diving and running ships and now
> live in
> Hawaii.
> Bad for manufacturing but good diving ;-)
>
> I will be using concrete construction for a number of projects at our
> farm, water
> tanks,
> and buildings so why not build a sub?
>
> I am planning first to build a one-man micro sub. It needs to be
> trailerable.
> It would be nice to have something the tiger sharks here can't bite in
> half.
>
> Thanks for hosting this forum!
>
> Best regards
>
> Michael Edwards
>
>