Design And Manufacture Of Underwater Mateable Electrical Connector

Underwater mateable electrical connector is used in underwater equipment or underwater cables for power or signal transmission.It has the performance of underwater hot swap,and is in great demand in marine engineering.However,underwater mateable electrical connector technology is basically monopolized by foreign countries.Domestic products have problems such as the inability to insert and remove underwater,low life,poor reliability,and low working water depth.In view of these problems,the deep sea plug connector was systematically studied,the prototype was developed and passed the test in this paper.The key technologies of pressure balance,seal,separation locking mechanism and anticorrosion of deep sea plug connectors have been studied and solved.Finally,soft bladder and piston pressure balance technology,O-ring and potting sealing technology,jaw type separation locking technology and comprehensive anti-corrosion technology based on materials and processes are adopted.Based on these key technologies,structural innovation design was carried out.According to the pressure balance structure and the locking mechanism,the doublebladder pressure balance type,the piston soft bladder composite pressure balance type and the single-layer soft bladder inner expansion type pressure-balanced underwater mateable electrical connectors were designed.The single-layer soft-seal expanded pressure-balanced underwater mateable electrical connector was fabricated as a prototype,and laboratory tests and deep-sea live tests were performed to meet the performance requirements.For the soft bladder pressure balance device,the pressure difference calculation model based on the thin shell theory is established,and the pressure difference iterative algorithm is given.According to the model,the effects of bladder parameters on the pressure balance characteristics of the bladder pressure balance device were studied.The results showed that the pressure balance performance of the device can be improved by reducing the thickness of the bladder,selecting the medium with high volume elastic modulus,reducing the radius of the bladder,increasing the length of the bladder,selecting the bladder material with lower elastic modulus,and reducing the volume ratio coefficient of the medium.Based on the Roth static seal model,a static seal leak model for soft bladder seals is established.This model illustrates the importance of pressure balance devices for lifting connector seals.Based on the traditional dynamic seal theory,a dynamic sealing performance research method for obtaining dynamic seal pressure distribution curve and calculating leakage amount by finite element analysis is proposed.Through this model,the curves in which the amount of dynamic seal leakage decreases and the sliding friction force increases as the working depth increases are obtained.