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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 96
PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING COMPUTING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping and Y. Tsompanakis
Paper 66

A Conceptual Design of an Underwater Hotel

C.T.F. Ross, M. El-Hajj, A.P.F. Little and R.J. Rodriguez-McCullough

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Design, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
C.T.F. Ross, M. El-Hajj, A.P.F. Little, R.J. Rodriguez-McCullough, "A Conceptual Design of an Underwater Hotel", in B.H.V. Topping, Y. Tsompanakis, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 66, 2011. doi:10.4203/ccp.96.66
Keywords: underwater hotel, Cyprus, pressure vessel, acrylic, Pro-Engineer, ANSYS, finite elements.

Summary
The paper presents for the first time a conceptual design, using two computer packages, namely Pro-Engineer and ANSYS, of an underwater hotel to be located off the coast of Cyprus. Pro-Engineer is a geometric modeller, with finite element capabilities. This conceptual design would not have been possible without the use of these two computer packages. The paper also reports on three other underwater hotels, two of which are currently operating and one of which is being built. The underwater hotels which are currently operating are called "Jules" and "Hydro-Polis" [1,2] and the other underwater hotel, which is being built, is called "Poisedon" [3]. Jules is situated in Key Largo, Florida; it is an underwater lodge with overnight accommodation. The other two hotels, one of which is built in Dubai, while the third underwater hotel; which is under construction, is in Fiji (Poseidon).

The hotel of the current project is called "Hydro-Season"; its circular shape is ideal for housing three different types of customers in a comfortable interior of one atmosphere internal pressure; also providing easy access and at a relatively low submerged depth. One group of customers' rooms will be totally submerged, while a second group of customers' rooms will be partially submerged. The third group's rooms will be above water level.

It is suggested that the entire structure is made buoyant with detachable rooms, and supported by adjustable legs in order to ease maintenance and for relocating and emergency procedures.

Pro-Engineer is a geometric modeller, which made this project possible. Without using a geometric modeller, such as Pro-Engineer, the conceptual design of the underwater hotel would have not been at all satisfactory. Pro-Engineer has the capabilities of converting simple schematic drawings into three-dimensional pictures; which can then be viewed at many angles; this facility was used here. Pro-Engineer also has the capability of calculating the weight of the object, and in this case, its buoyancy. These two features were invoked in this design. Pro-Engineer can also generate the critical dimensions of the object, so that a model can be made, using a rapid prototype machine. Moreover, if one had built a model of the object, before its engineering drawings were made, Pro-Engineer has the capability of scanning the model to produce a working engineering drawing. Moreover, Pro-Engineer has the capability of doing a static, dynamic and stability analysis of the structure, through its embedded finite element program, namely Mechanica. In this case, where we were dealing with a shell type structure, the authors would have had to use solid tetrahedral finite elements to model the shell. Although this was easy, in the case of this underwater hotel, the authors thought that ANSYS was a more satisfactory finite element program for modelling the underwater hotel, than Mechanica. Nevertheless, the authors used another facility of Pro-Engineer; which was to generate the required geometry of the underwater hotel, to form part of the finite element model for ANSYS, by outputting the structure as an IGDS file, via Pro-Engineer. This feature was also used in this design

ANSYS is a formidable finite element computer package, which has no difficulty in analyzing the static, stability and dynamics of almost any structure. In this case it was used for the static and stability analysis of the underwater hotel. The Shell93 isoparametric shell element was used, which had eight nodes per element, and each of these nodes had six degrees of freedom, three were translational degrees of freedom and three were rotational degrees of freedom.

References