This term is often used to separate such vehicles from submarines. However, in general use, the phrase “submarine” can be used to describe a ship, which, by technical definition, is actually an underwater vehicle.
There are many types of such equipment, including both home-made and industrially built ships, which are otherwise known as remote-controlled vehicles or ROVs. They have many applications around the world, especially in areas such as oceanography, underwater archeology, ocean exploration, tourism, equipment maintenance and restoration, and underwater video.
History
The first submarine was designed and built by the American inventor David Bushnel in 1775 as a means to introduce explosive charges on enemy ships during the American Revolutionary War. The device, called the Bushnell Turtle, was an oval vessel made of wood and copper. It contains tanks filled with water (for immersion), and then they were emptied using a hand pump to float to the surface. The operator used two propellers with a handle to move vertically or sideways underwater. The apparatus had small glass windows on top and luminescent wood attached to the case so that it could be controlled in the dark.
The Bushnell Turtle was first commissioned September 7, 1776 in New York Harbor to attack the British flagship HMS Eagle. At that time, Sergeant Ezra Lee controlled this underwater vehicle. Lee successfully led the Turtle to the bottom of the Eagle, but was unable to establish a charge due to the strong currents of the water. However, the story of these modes of transport did not end there.
Specifications
In addition to size, the main technical difference between the underwater vehicle and the submarine is that the first is not completely autonomous and can rely on an auxiliary object or vessel to replenish fuel and respiratory gases. Some devices operate on a “cable” or “umbilical cord”, remaining connected with the tender (submarine, surface ship or platform). They usually have a shorter range and work mainly under water, since most are useless on the surface. Submarines (vehicles) are capable of diving to a depth of more than 10 km (6 miles) below the surface of the water.
Submarines can be relatively small, contain only a small team and do not have living quarters. They often have a very dexterous construction, equipped with propeller screws or pumps.
Technology
There are five main technologies used in the design of underwater vehicles. Unipolar devices have a body under high pressure, and their passengers are at that under normal atmospheric pressure. They easily withstand high water pressure, which is many times higher than the internal.
Another technology, called environmental pressure, maintains the same load both inside and outside the vessel. This reduces the pressure that the housing must withstand.
The third technology is the wet submarine. The term refers to a vehicle with a flooded interior. In both aquatic and atmospheric environments, there is no need to use SCUBA equipment, passengers can breathe normally without putting on any additional devices.
Highscores
Due to cable traction, underwater vehicles can sink to great depths. The Bathyscaphe Trieste was the first to reach the deepest part of the ocean (almost 11 km (7 miles) below the surface) at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960.
China, with its Jiaolong project in 2002, was the fifth country to send a man 3500 meters below sea level, following the United States, France, Russia and Japan. On the morning of June 22, 2012, the Jiaolong loading and unloading complex set a record for deep diving when three people descended 22,844 feet (6,963 meters) into the Pacific Ocean.
Among the most famous and longest operating submarines is the DSV Alvin deep-sea research ship, which is manned by 3 people and is capable of diving to a depth of up to 4,500 meters (14,800 feet). It belongs to the United States Navy, is managed by the WHOI system, and has completed more than 4,400 dives since 2011.
James Cameron made a record dive to the bottom of the Challenger Depth, the deepest known point of the Mariana Trench, on March 26, 2012. Cameron's submarine was called Deepsea Challenger and reached a depth of 10,908 meters (35,787 feet).
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Most recently, private Florida firms have launched a series of Triton Submarines. SEAmagine Hydrospace, Sub Aviator Systems (or SAS) and Netherlands-based Worx have developed small submarines for tourism and exploration.
A Canadian company called Sportsub has been building personal recreational submarines with open-floor structures (partially flooded cockpits) since 1986.
Functional Views
Small unmanned aerial vehicles, called “marine remotely controlled vehicles,” or MROVs, are widely used today to work in water that is too deep or too dangerous for divers.
Such vehicles help repair offshore oil platforms and attach cables to sunken ships to lift them. Such remotely controlled vehicles are attached with a cable (thick cable providing power and communication) to the control center on the ship. Operators on the ship observe video images sent back from the robot, and can control the propellers and the manipulator of the device. The flooded "Titanic" was studied by just such a vehicle.
Bathyscaphe
A bathyscaphe is a self-propelled deep-sea submersible submarine consisting of a crew cabin, similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below the float, and not by a surface cable, as in the classic design of the bathysphere. Many consider it as a type of self-propelled underwater vehicle.
Its float is filled with gasoline, easily accessible, floating and extremely durable. Fuel incompressibility means that tanks can be very easily constructed because the pressure inside and outside the tanks is balanced. Also, tanks do not have the task to fully withstand any pressure drops, while the cockpit is designed to resist a huge load. Buoyancy on the surface can be easily reduced by replacing gasoline with water that is denser.
Etymology
Auguste Picard, inventor of the first bathyscaphe, composed the name “bathyscaphe” using the ancient Greek words βαθύς bathys (“deep”) and σκάφος skaphos (“ship” / “ship”).
Functioning
To go down, the bathyscaphe floods the air reservoirs with sea water. But unlike a submarine, the liquid in its flooded containers cannot be displaced with compressed air to rise. This is due to the fact that the water pressure at the depths for which the ship was intended to work is too great.
For example, the load at the bottom of the Challenger Deep — the apparatus on which James Cameron himself sailed — is more than seven times the pressure in a standard H-type compressed gas cylinder. For balance, this apparatus used iron weights. Containers with them consist of one or more cylinders that are open at the bottom throughout the dive, and the load is held in place by an electromagnet. This is a fail-safe device, since it does not require a power increase.
History of bathyscaphe
The first bathyscaphe was named FNRS-2 - in honor of the National Foundation for Recreational Research - and was built in Belgium from 1946 to 1948 by Auguste Picard. FNRS-1 was a balloon used to lift Picard into the stratosphere in 1938.
The movement of the first bathyscaphe was provided by battery-powered electric motors. The float amounted to 37,850 liters of aviation gasoline. There was no access tunnel in it. The scope was to be loaded and unloaded on deck. The first voyages are described in detail in the book of Jacques Cousteau “The Quiet World”. According to the story, "the ship calmly withstood the pressure of the depths, but was destroyed by a minor flurry." The FNRS-3 was a new underwater vehicle using the crew area from the damaged FNRS-2 and a new, larger 75.700-liter float.
The second bathyscaphe Piccard was purchased by the U.S. Navy from Italy in 1957. It had two cargoes with ballast water and eleven buoyancy tanks containing 120,000 liters of gasoline. The Poseidon submarine was later invented.
In 1960, the bathyscaphe, bearing the son of Picard Jacques and Lieutenant Don Walsh, reached the deepest known place on the Earth's surface - the Challenger Depths in the Mariana Trench. The airborne systems indicated a depth of 37,800 ft (11,521 m), but was subsequently corrected to 35,813 ft (10,916 m), taking into account changes due to salinity and temperature.
The apparatus was equipped with a powerful source of energy, which, illuminating a small fish like a flounder, raised the question of whether life existed at such a depth in the complete absence of light. The crew of the bathyscaphe noted that the bottom consisted of diatom silt and reported the observation of some type of flounder, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across, lying on the seabed.
In 1995, the Japanese sent an autonomous underwater vehicle to the same depth, but later it was lost at sea. In 2009, a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute sent a robotic submarine named Nereus to the bottom of the trench.
The invention of the bathysphere
The bathysphere (from the Greek βαθύς, ban, “deep” and σφαῖρα, sfire, “sphere”) was a unique spherical deep-sea submarine, which was remotely controlled and descended into the ocean on a cable. It was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934.
The Bathysphere was designed in 1928 and 1929 by the American engineer Otis Barton and became famous due to the fact that the naturalist William Bib used it to study underwater wildlife. In its structure, the bathysphere is close to a torpedo underwater vehicle.