NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama will be the development and manufacturing headquarters for the new aerospace-grade hull which will be key to completing the Company’s latest Cyclops-class submersible.

NASA’s advanced composite manufacturing capability is ideally suited for the high precision and high-quality requirements of our latest hull design

OceanGate CEO & Founder, Stockton Rush

The company are hoping that this joint design agreement with NASA will further the development of its five-person submarine capable of reaching 19,700 feet. It’s hoped that the new submersible would be operational by 2021 and take on a series of dives to the wreck of the Titanic which lies at a depth of 12,500 feet in the North Atlantic.

Over the last few years, OceanGate has been developing its Titan submersible, made from a mixture of carbon fibre and titanium. The filament wound cylinder that forms the centre section of the pressure vessel is nearly 13 cm thick and made from over 800 layers of carbon fibre composites. The entire pressure vessel consists of two titanium hemispheres, two matching titanium interface rings, and the 142 cm internal diameter, 2.4 metres long carbon fibre wound cylinder, the largest such device ever built for use in a manned submersible.

In April 2019 OceanGate crew sets a world record with Titan as the first four-person dive to 12,300 feet.

The post NASA & OceanGate team up to Develop Carbon Fibre Pressure Vessels appeared first on Composites Today.

Under a contract issued to Boeing Research & Technology, OceanGate, the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington and Boeing have validated the basic hull design for a submersible vehicle able to reach depths of 3,000 metres (9,800 feet). With its large 180-degree borosilicate glass dome, the new vehicle will offer clients a chance to examine the environment, collect samples, and deploy technology in subsea settings in person and in real-time. When commercially available in 2016, Cyclops will be the only privately owned deep-water (greater than 2,000 meters/6,600 feet) manned submersible available for contracts. A follow on 6,000-metre version is slated for completion in 4Q 2016.

Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO said;

Recent advances in material science, manufacturing and testing facilities that combine innovative engineering processes have allowed for a unique collaboration between OceanGate, Boeing and the APL team to complete the feasibility study and move the process to the manufacturing stage, the research, military and commercial markets need more vehicles for subsea exploration. OceanGate’s Cyclops submersible will usher in a new class of vehicle to help fulfil this need.

The Cyclops submersible will feature a seven-inch thick, individual-fibre-placed carbon fibre hull using proprietary Boeing manufacturing technology. The ability to accurately place thousands of individual strips of pre-impregnated fibre will overcome many of the hard to control variables surrounding traditional filament winding processes and permit the hull to withstand the very high compressive loads at 3,000 meters (300 bar/4,300 psi).
 
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The use of carbon fibre will also help make Cyclops significantly lighter than other subsea manned submersibles, making deployment operations faster, easier and cost-efficient. While in the water, Cyclops’ five crew members can comfortably observe the ocean depths through a massive glass dome, which offers unobstructed views for at-depth inspections, environmental assessments, discussion, decision-making and observation.

Operating at depths beyond 1,000 metres with remotely operated vehicles is extremely difficult as they require large heavy tethers and specialised support vessels. Cyclops will eliminate the tethering limitations and allow its five crew members to observe underwater environments for up to eight continuous hours. Using a patent-pending submerging Launch, Retrieval and Transport (LRT) platform, OceanGate can operate a manned vehicle with ships of opportunity at much lower costs than most other manned vehicles and, in many cases, even less expensively than ROVs. With the ability to be quickly and affordably deployed around the world, Cyclops will usher in a new generation of oceanic exploration and study.

OceanGate first received national attention last November for the discovery of a downed World War II Hellcat fighter aircraft off the coast of Miami, Florida that was showcased on CBS morning news. More recently, in June 2013 OceanGate completed a series of successful expeditions in three different bodies of water – the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean – all in just 30 days. In the Gulf of Mexico, Black Elk Energy tasked Antipodes to dive on a decommissioned offshore oil platform to survey the site and gather trans-sectional footage for use in assessments on the “Idle Iron” issue. In addition, OceanGate’s Expedition Lionfish, which took place off the coast of Florida, received international attention for connecting researchers and stakeholders as part of a larger dialogue to address the economic and environmental impacts of the lionfish epidemic.

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