Fluid Structure Interaction and Morphing Ocean Structure Deployment

As human explore deeper into ocean, more and more subsea structures need to be installed.
Deployable structures, a folded package which could be drop from surface and at destination morphing
into its final structure form have significant advantages like its counterpart in space structures. More
recently, many space missions have proposed large inflatable structure for different proposes. In lieu of
the difference between outer space and underwater environment, it is necessary to include the fluid
structure interaction in underwater deployable inflatable structures application to study the effect of
dense liquid environment on the inflating dynamics of ocean structures. The purpose for the present
research is to demonstrate, through a numerical simulation and a small scale water tank test, a
Deployable Structure for Intervention on Oil Seeps DISIOS, which could form an underwater dome and
collect lower density chemicals from oil seep. DISIOS prototype are formed by membranes and
inflatable tubes, where tubes act as framework to support the membranes to construct a dome. The
study begin with simulate water injection into flatted structures to verify the ability of LS-Dyna software.
Deflection and velocity of membranes are recorded to compare with experiment data. Then we turned
to inflate process of folded structure by different folded methods. From unfolding process simulation, we
could determine which type of fold method works best for our predesign shape of tube. We are now
conducting the dynamic analysis of inflatable tube, which is the elementary component of DISIOS
framework.