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APPLICATIONS
www.reinforcedplastics.com 7REINFORCEDplastics NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
Submersible features carbon fibre hull
WORKING WITH Boeing and the
University of Washington in
Seattle, OceanGate Inc. has
completed the initial carbon fi bre
composite hull design and feasi-
bility study for its new manned
submersible, named Cyclops™.
Under a contract issued to
Boeing Research & Technology
(BR&T), OceanGate, the Applied
Physics Laboratory at the Univer-
sity of Washington (APL-UW) and
Boeing have validated the basic
hull design for a submersible
vehicle able to reach depths of
3000 m (9800 ft).
“Recent advances in material
science, manufacturing and
testing facilities that combine
innovative engineering processes
have allowed for a unique
collaboration between Ocean-
Gate, Boeing and the APL team
to complete the feasibility study
and move the process to the
manufacturing stage,” says
Stockton Rush, chief executive
offi cer of OceanGate, a Seattle-
headquartered provider of deep-
sea manned submersibles. The
Cyclops submersible will feature
a 7 inch (17.8 cm) thick carbon
fi bre composite hull, manufac-
tured using proprietary Boeing
fi bre placement technology. The
ability to place thousands of
individual strips of pre-impreg-
nated fi bre accurately will over-
come many of the hard to
control variables surrounding
traditional fi lament winding
processes, OceanGate reports,
and permit the hull to withstand
the very high compressive loads
at 3000 m (300 bar/4300 psi).
The use of carbon fi bre
composite will also help make
Cyclops signifi cantly lighter than
other subsea manned submersi-
bles, OceanGate claims, making
deployment operations faster,
easier and cost-effi cient. When
commercially available in 2016,
Cyclops will be the only privately
owned deep-water (greater than
2000 m/6600 ft) manned
submersible available for
contracts. A follow-on 6000 m
version is slated for completion in
the fourth quarter of 2016.
Operating at depths beyond
1000 m with remotely operated
vehicles (ROVs) is extremely diffi -
cult as they require large heavy
tethers and specialised support
vessels, OceanGate explains.
Using a patent-pending
submerging Launch, Retrieval
and Transport (LRT) platform,
OceanGate says it can operate a
manned vehicle with ships of
opportunity at much lower costs
than most other manned vehi-
cles and, in many cases, even
less expensively than ROVs. .
OceanGate;
www.oceangate.com
APL-UW;
www.apl.washington.edu
Boeing; www.boeing.com
RP0613_appsNews 7 01-11-2013 09:38:10