Future Innovations in Scuba Gear?!

[Goose75]

Here are my thoughts on several posts
-Compression due to depth of a carbon/epoxy composite tank should not be a problem. Compression properties are well known due to a high level of testing. Compression is a matrix (resin) dominated property and buckling critical for the fiber, so everybody tests for it.
-A thin, heated suit is something to look into. Power and suit heat loss are the problems.
-Personally formed backplate. This could be done by making a cast and then doing a "wet lay-up" composite plate. You could even make a reliable one in your garage. Problems are that it is expensive and so custom that it has low resale value.
-Solar panels. Nice if you are surface swimming and outside on shore a lot. They won't collect much as you submerge. They also won't have the best position for sunlight. I think a car charger might be more useful.
-luminescent stripes could be experimented with by buying some at Wal-Mart and taking them down to see if you can see them very well. I'm not sure they will be very visible, but I may have to try this myself. I have an underwater pulsing strobe I strap to my leg for the same purpose.
-Conformal tank. Engineers don't like the idea because it isn't the most efficient use of material and not the "elegant" answer. Doesn't mean it can't be done. I don't have a copy of the pressure vessel code any longer but it may be that elliptical are not covered. I don't remember any.
-luminescent cave line. I woner if someone has already done this? It shouldn't be that difficult r expensive.

As for less drag. Hoods and shoulders of suits should have a rough surface. Rough surfaces produce less drag by promoting turbulent flow. Engineers go for laminar flow because it is predictable and controllable. Since your fins control your propulsion, generating some turbulence around the front of you shouldn't affect control much.

 

[MikeC]

In regards to the custom backplate, would you need different versions when you dive wet vs dry? What about when you use just a dive skin?

 

[Goose75]

In regards to the custom backplate, would you need different versions when you dive wet vs dry? What about when you use just a dive skin?

I don't think so. Even if it was a perfect mold, it should fit closer with various suits than a generic plate. Matching the spine curvature should provide 90% of the comfort, the rest is extra.

 

[dlwalke]

Several people have mentioned the idea of a noncompressable suit and, on a related note, actively warmed suits. re: the first, surely there are materials from which one could make microspheres that would withstand several atmospheres of pressure and that would also be reasonably lightweight. Now that I think about it, I feel a little surprised by my ignorance of how a wetsuit works. But isn't it that it mostly traps a thin layer of water between your wetsuit and body...you're body warms up the water, and the wetsuit (a) acts as a insulation, retarding the dissipation of heat from the layer of water within and (b) the nitrogen in the neoprene bubbles themselves warm up and retain some heat. So the reason thicker wetsuits are better is that they have more insulation. Anyhow, that was a bit of an aside, but back to what I was saying. Couldn't some sort of lightweight microspheres just be layered out and then embedded into some sort of rubber like material. The beads would be rigid and, therefore, once held in place after being embedded into a rubber-ish matrix, the resulting material would be mostly incompressible. The matrix within which they are embedded would provide stretch and flexibility. As for the 2nd issue, aren't there materials that can be heated in a microwave, for example, and then will continue to emit heat over a protracted timecourse. If the timecourse could be stretched out for >60 minutes or so, such a suit might be useful for recreational diving.

Dave

 

[lairdb]

Several people have mentioned the idea of a noncompressable suit and, on a related note, actively warmed suits. re: the first, surely there are materials from which one could make microspheres that would withstand several atmospheres of pressure and that would also be reasonably lightweight.

Your [omitted] analysis of how a wetsuit works assigns too much virtue to the interior layer of water, I believe, but otherwise you're substantially correct; it's the bubbles of trapped gas in the neoprene that insulate you from the outside, and it's the compression of those bubbles that reduces the suit's insulating effect.

Given that, I found myself thinking exactly what you were: instead of air-foamed or nitrogen-foamed neoprene (generically speaking, polychloroprene, to be precise), what about embedding noncompressible "bubbles" in the material? These needn't be vacuum-filled buckyballs (though that would score well on the coolmeter); any robust hollow microsphere would work.

 

[jonnythan]

what about embedding noncompressible "bubbles" in the material? These needn't be vacuum-filled buckyballs (though that would score well on the coolmeter); any robust hollow microsphere would work.

Interesting.. embed microspheres into rubber instead of air....

 

[D_B]

They do have micro-spheres for making epoxy filler lighter for aircraft (I know It's used in models and homebuilt aircraft) I don't know why you could not mix it in with the rubber when making the wetsuit

DB

 

[Bill51]

An interesting concept would be microspheres filled with Argon for the best insulating properties and rigid enough to keep the suit’s buoyancy relatively linear at depth.

 

[dlwalke]

They do have micro-spheres for making epoxy filler lighter for aircraft (I know It's used in models and homebuilt aircraft) I don't know why you could not mix it in with the rubber when making the wetsuit

DB

Yeah. These are widely available. I used them when I built my kayak. So long as they could withstand several ATMs repetitively and, ideally, be formed in a nitrogen/argon etc filled chamber (which seems perfectly plausible), something like this is exactly what I was thinking.

-d-

 

[DivesWithTurtles]

...
Given that, I found myself thinking exactly what you were: instead of air-foamed or nitrogen-foamed neoprene (generically speaking, polychloroprene, to be precise), what about embedding noncompressible "bubbles" in the material? These needn't be vacuum-filled buckyballs (though that would score well on the coolmeter); any robust hollow microsphere would work.

Yep, it's been thought of and being worked on by folks who may know what their doing. See DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF THERMAL INSULATION FOR DIVERS about 1/3 down the page.