GLASS AND CERAMIC HULLS FOR OCEANOGRAPHIC APPLICATIONS 



by 



J. D. Stachiw 



U. S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory 



Port Hueneme, California 



INTRODUCTION 



More than five years have passed since glass and ceramics appeared on 

 the horizon of the deep subinergence materials application field. Since 

 that time, a sufficient number of papers,! articles^ ,3,4 and reports^ ' "' ' >' 

 has been published to convince even the most conservative scientist and 

 engineer that glass and ceramics do indeed possess the highest compressive 

 strength and compressive strength to weight ratio of all the known com- 

 mercially available structural materials. The superiority of these 

 materials' ability to withstand compressive stresses has been described 

 and proven to such a point that it can be considered axiomatic, and no 

 need exists to belaborate this point further. 



Since the point has been proven that these materials are superior in 

 compression and, therefore, worthy of consideration for the construction 

 of deep submergence structures, the question arises as to what uses these 

 materials have already been put in that field and in which applications 

 they promise to succeed in the near future. It is hoped that this brief 

 paper will summarize the progress made in applying glass and ceramics to 

 the deep submergence structures field and will, possibly, crystallize the 

 thinking for future research plans in this field. 



STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS 



After the discovery that glass and ceramics possess outstanding com- 

 pressive strength properties and thus would seem to be ideal choices for 

 application in deep submergence structures, unlimited vistas arose as to 

 their use in that field. They could be used for the hulls of deep-diving 

 submarines, torpedoes, mines, buoys, instrumentation capsules, permanent 

 ocean-bottom installations, and as components of other deep submergence 

 equipment where their high compressive strength and/or optical trans- 

 parency make them desirable. No matter which application was considered, 

 the problems of designing with unfamiliar materials, of fabricating com- 

 plex and large structures, of joining glass and ceramics to each other 



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