ON THE APPLICATION OF CERAMICS IN DEEP WATER BUOYANCY MODULES

Abstract

Today ceramic materials occupy more and more new niches of application. These include deep-water apparatuses for various purposes. For example, at present time oil production industry confronts the problem of discovering new oil and gas reserves, 40 % of which are connected with the development of ever-increasing sea depths that, in its turn, requires certain buoyancy of the submersibles to support the payload. The buoyancy can be provided either by a durable hull, or by using buoyant crafts (modules), or by both methods simultaneously. Due to high values of compressive strength, ceramics are considered as a promising material for operation at great depths, where hydrostatic pressure is significantly increased. The paper presents the results of analysis of domestic and foreign literature in the field of creation of hollow macrospheres based on ceramics for their use in modules of buoyancy of deep-water vehicles instead of syntactic foams with glass microspheres. It is shown that the most promising material is ceramics based on aluminum oxide. The results of ceramic spheres tests under the influence of pressures corresponding to the work of deep-water apparatus at different depths are presented. The analysis of the strength evaluation of ceramic macrospheres is given, which is necessary to assess their performance efficiency.