Development of a procedure for the selection of candidate vessels of opportunity in support of the submarine rescue diving and recompression system

Abstract

The U.S. Navy's new system for rescuing stranded submariners, the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS), utilizes a tethered, remotely operated Pressurized Rescue Module (PRM) deployed and controlled from a Vessel of Opportunity (VOO). The PRM is capable of docking with the disabled submarine at pressure and rescuing up to 16 personnel per sortie. The PRM is launched and recovered using a deck mounted A-frame crane called the Launch and Recovery System (LARS). Upon recovery, the PRM docks with the Submarine Decompression System (SDS) to allow transfer and decompression of personnel. The PRM, LARS, SDS, and associated generators and auxiliaries all compose the Submarine Rescue System (SRS). The SRS, approximately 183 tons, is installed aboard the VOO. The SRS was nominally designed for operation on the U.S. Navy's Auxiliary Fleet Tug, T-ATF, but is actually intended to be a fly-away system, capable of being installed on any available VOO near the disabled submarine. The VOO may be any Offshore Supply Vessel (OSV), Anchor Handling Tug, or offshore barge that has the capacity to handle the SRS and is available in the area of a disabled submarine. Since the SRS must be rapidly deployed, potential VOOs must be quickly identified and evaluated for structural, stability and seakeeping suitability with respect to the requirements for the SRS. This thesis describes the theoretical background and development of a procedure intended to aid in the analysis and evaluation of potential VOOs for stability and seakeeping suitability. This procedure utilizes limited information about the potential VOO such as length, beam, draft, depth, deck strength, dead weight tonnage, etc. as inputs for rapidly modeling hull geometry. The developed hull geometry is combined with an empirically derived weight distribution which serve as the input for stability analysis for several different load cases and the seakeeping analysis.