A Comparison of Different Rules for the Spherical Pressure Hull of Deep Manned Submersibles

Abstract

A brief description of current available design rules for spherical pressure hull of deep manned submersibles is provided,and the common foundation of these rules is found to be either the classical yielding load formula or critical elastic buckling load formula.Then these rules are used to calculate the shell thickness of the spherical pressure hulls of several existing submersibles.The calculation results are compared after the unification of input parameters of all design rules.According to this comparison,it is found that there is significant difference among the calculation results of these rules and the design thickness calculated by most rules is much larger than the actual design thickness of existing pressure hulls.Thus it is appealed to be urgent and necessary to update and unify current design rules.Finally,the process of establishing the new design rule is proposed.