Concrete Hulls for Undersea Applications

The experimental and analytical studies initiated at the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory (NCEL) since 1964 have shown that concrete is not only a feasible but a desirable construction material for pressure resistant hulls in undersea installations. Considerable experimental data have been generated on the behavior of spherical and cylindrical shells under external hydrostatic pressure. This paper addresses itself to summarizing the findings of past work and to presenting the most recent results from investigations on the failure modes of spheres, scaling-up effect from small to large model spheres, influence of mechanical joints located at the equator of spheres, and the behavior of cylindrical hulls having various cylinder length to ouside diameter ratios.