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Ok... I've long been gathering info. etc. of
prospective hull designs for a particular style of "submarine" I'm thinking of
at the very least drawing plans for. Issue I'm having at this time of
course is strength. I've opted to use a contractor to build a good
Carbon-steel shell for me (my father is in the vacuum tank business), as they
can be relatively inexpensive. HOWEVER, it gets pricey when you get
anything over 1/8" thickness. 1/4" seems the sweet spot, although I've
seen 3/8" as well. Even still, this isnt enough, and typically tank
manufacturers dont use 537 steel in their construction.
My PLAN was to simply use the shell as a template
to lay carbon fiber over. The more I thought about it, the more it made
sense. Not only would the CF protect the steel from the elements, but it's
also stronger, albeit ridiculously buoyant. The other negative is you cant
get adequate EM signals out of anything made from the stuff, so this means many
through-hulls :( All in all, a good tradeoff if you
asked me. My ideas to get around the buoyancy issue is simply
designing it as a lead-lined double hull. In my mind, I'm thinking super
easy to construct although there are many steps (the nature of composite
construction), but ridiculously strong and reliable. As well, it could be
more easily broken-down for xport or drydock. The outer-hull would be
ambient.
Anyways, I'm having trouble dealing with the darn
math. I have HullCalc, but it's only setup for steel and I'm having
trouble even getting specs. on various steel chemistry that I could easily plug
into the program. Does anyone know of a good all-around prog. to calculate
this stuff? And where's a good place to find the material specs. to plug
into the programs?
Thanks
Shawn
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