New design method of ceramics pressure housings for deep ocean applications

Ceramic is one of promising materials for pressure housings because ceramic has higher compressive strength than titan alloys. However, as the tensile strengths of ceramics are only a fraction of the compressive strength, common design methods for pressure housings of metals can not be directly applied to ceramic pressure housings. We will propose a new design method to coupling ceramic hemisphere and cylinder, and confirmed its validity with finite-element method analysis. We made a small-sized model of a pressure housing and examined that it can stand external 120 MPa water pressure.