Composite pressure hulls for deep ocean submersibles

DRA Dunfermline first became involved in the development of a composite pressure hull for a deep ocean submersible with the NERC Autosub project and this work has continued under the European MAST II programme. This paper describes the analysis which has been carried out in support of an extensive programme of model testing. An anisotropic Lame solution has been developed for the analysis of cylindrical components under external pressure and this was used to evaluate some of the popular failure criteria. Extensive use was also made of the Finite Element method.