1. The connectors had to be isolated from the 

 forces and attendant motion transmitted through the 

 heavy attached cables, particularly cables to ships at 

 the surface. 



2. The connector halves themselves must either 

 be made neutrally buoyant or be affixed to a 

 structure. 



Rendezvous and Alignment Tests. The initial 

 sea tests were made in a vertical mode, wdth the 

 female half attached to a test stand. As shown in 

 Figure 5, a guide cone was attached to the vertical 

 female connector half and equipped with gears to 

 align and then mate the male half to the female. A 

 variable-buoyancy lift bag was used to provide a 

 motion-isolating catenary in the cable from the 

 surface and to make the male connector half nearly 

 neutral in the water. The gear system enabled the 

 divers to rotate the male connector and to crank the 

 halves together while the cone held them in align- 

 ment. 



The entire system was taken to sea and tested 

 vvith the female held in a stand which rested on the 

 bottom in 50 feet of water. The divers were able to 

 achieve neutral buoyancy on the male cable and mate 

 the connectors on the first try within 25 minutes of 

 entering the water. The stand for the female was 20 

 degrees from vertical, 50 feet away from the boat. 

 The male connector had to be rotated a full 180 

 degrees by the gears to obtain correct phase-to-phase 

 orientation. 



The entire system was later taken to the 

 SEACON site for further test and demonstration. The 

 guide cone was attached to the female connector at 

 the SEACON Station S buoy at 50 feet and the male 

 connector was successfully mated underwater by 

 divers, this time in a strong current (0.75 to 1.0 kt). 

 The system functioned electrically, and the SEACON 

 structure was powered through the just-mated wet 

 connector and the dry connector attached to the 

 SEACON structure at 600 feet. The handling 

 techniques for this operation were very successful. 



To summarize, the experimental wet connector 

 had the following major deficiencies: 



1. The pin-wiping technique used to dry the 

 contacts during mating was unreliable and degraded 

 with only one to three matings. 



2. The pressure-compensating system and cable 

 termination had the same inadequacies as the dry 

 connector. 



In addition to the major discrepancies listed 

 above, the experimental program revealed a host of 

 minor areas for improvement in both the wet and the 

 dry connectors. Most of these had to do with material 

 selection or design details. A summary of these 

 various problems follows: 



1. Materials. 



a. The use of 316 stainless steel for the 

 connector housings was acceptable in these relatively 

 short-term tests, but for immersions of several years 

 the known crevice-corrosion properties of stainless 

 steel would make titanium or 90-10 copper-nickel a 

 better choice. In applications requiring minimal 

 mechanical strength the housing even could be made 

 of a plastic. 



b . The use of glass-filled Teflon in the 

 dummy pistons of the wet female half was unsatisfac- 

 tory because of the poor structural properties of the 

 material. Under pressure the rods deformed and stuck 

 in the cylinders, and they scratched easily. DuPont 

 Delrin (a nonpolar plastic) proved superior. 



c. The use of diallyl phthalate (DAP), RTV 

 silicone rubber and glass in the penetrator pins was 

 also unsatisfactory. The differing bulk moduli, 

 dielectric constants and dielectric strengths led to 

 tracking along the various interfaces after the very 

 weak bonds along them had been sheared because of 

 differential expansion and contraction under 

 pressure. At high pressure the RTV did not seal the 

 face of the fused-glass pins on the wet side of the 

 male connector. At high voltage there was substantial 

 leakage current along the glass/RTV interface. Pene- 

 trator pins and other insulated sections should use the 

 absolute minimum variety of materials. 



2. Design Details. 



a. The use of a single 0-ring seal on the wet 

 connector dummy pistons eventually proved success- 

 ful, but only after considerable redesign of the faces 

 of the pistons and matching male penetrator pins to 

 eliminate misalignment and to ensure that the piston- 

 pin combination presented an essentially smooth 



