this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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CF just seems like a bad material to use for this purpose at all
CF is extremely light, so when you want to build something that sink it make sense to build it out of extremely expensive CF rather than cheap steel like every other submarine.
It's also not great when the pressure is on the outside of the vessel. It's good at containing pressure because that leads to tension on the carbon fibers which is when they're their strongest. But when the pressure's on the outside of the vessel they're more or less useless.
Yeah, at the point where you're resisting outside pressure your hull is basically just the plastic resin that the fibres are sealed in. Without that, the fibres are just a fabric bag.
Imagine if they'd said "We're diving down to the Titanic in a submersible with a plastic resin hull." Doesn't sound so great.
Your point makes sense, but an epoxy submersible definitely wouldn't make it down to the titanic intact even once, and there are some ways fibers could be put in tension by compressing the cylinder, so the CF was doing something, its just complicated. They shouldve just built a normal submersible though.
But it sounds cool