Research On Structural Design For Deep-sea Submersible View Port Windows

Deep-sea submersible is a kind of transport vehicle for exploring and developing the ocean.One of the key technologies is the design of deep-sea pressure structures. At the present time,conventional metallic material is usually used for making pressure structures, such as steels,titanium alloy, and high strength aluminum alloy and so on. With the development of new stylematerial and energy resource, designers tend to aim at better performance that the deep-seasubmersible can dive deeper, have lighter total weight and wider field of vision. Compared withtraditional metals, nonmetal materials can provide higher specific strength and specific modulus.This paper firstly presents an introduction of nonmetal pressure structures which are adoptedin the design of deep-sea submersible, then describes the study related to the view ports ofdeep-sea submersible. The transparent pressure structures of deep-sea submersible include viewport windows, the lampshade of lights and the glass of photography equipment used under water.In this paper, the research object is view port windows with different structure styles. Accordingto the analysis of typical view port window models, there are several differential equations whichare associated to the design variables and stress distribution of the models. The boundaryconditions are simplified and the stress formula for the models are achieved. The results of finiteelement models and theoretical models are compared and the differences between them arediscussed.After that, the effect on the stress, strain and deformation of the view port structures of eachvariable is analyzed. Further, two kinds of typical view port structures are compared under thesame design requirement to verify which is better. In the end, there is a test for the spherical shellacrylic windows. Connecting with the results of finite element models, the different resultsbetween them are discussed. The conclusions of this paper are meaningful for the design ofnonmetal pressure structures, especially for the view port structures.