November newsletter

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Good morning, In our second newsletter for the year we'd like to give you some updates as well as highlight the work undertaken by our phenomenal Hull team! Developments  Between the 7th-10th of November, WASUB was present at the Europort Maritime exhibition. Our team had their submarine on display at a stand & had the opportunity to interact with several companies from around the world & spread our initiatives for the upcoming eISR competition. The engineering department of WASUB VIII met with DAMEN in mid November to discuss the upcoming design for the submarine. A meeting with MARIN took place on the 20th of November to discuss the propulsion aspects of our new submarine! Featured: Hull team This year, the team have decided to take up a new challenge by 3D-printing the hull. While a lot of skepticism is associated with 3D-printing, we have proven otherwise by innovating. A model scale hull was developed for us thanks to Leapfrog.  The material we will use for printing the sub is polylactic acid (PLA). PLA has a specific gravity of 1.25, in contrast to the traditionally used CFRP which has a specific gravity of 1.6. This will make it easier for the submarine to achieve neutral buoyancy. This novel method will also allow us to expedite our production process. If you were wondering just how strong it is- we put our 2mm thick model seen in the picture through a compression test and it could withstand a whopping 16kN (1600 kg) of force! In the run up to Christmas, our team is busy finishing up the final design and filling up the order books for production work that's due to begin after the Christmas break.  We will also be having a design presentation early next year- this is where we will unveil the final WASUB VIII design. Hope you all are as excited as we are! Stay tuned for more. WASUB VIII