I have been thinking/looking at ballast tank designs and i was wondering if one of my ideas might be plausible, so far the best one i have seen is this one on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBvYJAROLDU its and ok design but because of the center shaft it would double in length when empty. i also relized another problem. should a ship rely on this design, the empty space where air is in the back of the ballast tank would be open to the rest of the ship. So.... should it get shot and it empty the tanks to surface, well it would still fill up from the rest of the ship and no matter what become a full tank, thus definatly dooming the entire ship . anyway..... i was thinking spacewise to be more efficient, a design where it would have something like a syringe with only one opening on the big end, and have a centrifugal pump there? I think it would (Possibly) be more compact than most mechanical designs i have seen. it could have a small 1 way valve to prevent water going back in I found this picture to show the pump, you could have the discharge going up into a small port under the wooden deck so it would be pushed out under the deck (or somewhere else if you wanted) and the suction would be coming from the syringe. What do you guys think?
you'd probably be better off doing them like a real submarine does. Have a valve that opens at the top of the tank to let air out, and let the tank free flood. Use CO2 to re-fill the tank and push the water out through the free flooding vents at the bottom of the tank.
But then you have a co2 tank you couldnt refill while in the water, and should you run out of gas then you woudlnt be able to surface again. plus the size of the tank and regs and valves etc. i want a small mechanical system i could use..
Fit the gas ballast system. Make the sub (just) positively bouyant, and fit a small quantity of bb's into a servo-operated dump tube. Load the tube with as many bb's as required for neutral bouyancy. When you run out of gas to blow the ballast tanks, drop the bb's and run for shore.
I was kinda bored today so I made a little ballast tank made from a syringe operated by a pump. I dont know about its float/sink effectiveness, but it pumps. I uploaded it to imageshack, so I hope the link works this is just a prototype btw, and running only on two AAA batteries. http://yfrog.us/9emoviecvz
Pretty cool! One method the sub group uses is a balatter (sp?) from a blood pressure tester. You know, the part that tightens around your arm. they fill that displacing water within the sub.
Im on a trip right now so I cannot work on it, Though when i get back I hope to get a better motor and mount, and more powerfull tests. Like the Idea of a bladder thing whatever lol.
Are you planning this for a combat sub? If so you will not have that much room inside the hull and you still need to have CO2 to fire your cannon. crzyhawk's method takes up the least amount of room and works just fine. Either way you do it, you want to have working dive planes so you will always be able to surface. J
Saw this on Youtube today, its a slightly different take on using a syringe as a ballast tank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPV_ZUiJNQI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBvYJAROLDU
