Using Balloons to Test a Submarine: An Unexpected Research Tool

An example of low-cost research techniques.
Why are we using a submarine to blow up balloons?
Is it Captain Nemo’s birthday party?
Nope, just a simple approach to technology. It’s to test the submarines ballast tank blow system. The ballast tank blow system is the thing on the submarine that makes it come back up to the surface of the water after diving. We can test it by listening to the air coming out, but how much air? And is it going to the right places?

We pulled out all the air line that go into the ballast tank and stuck balloons on them. Then we tell the submarine to surface. The valves open and close, and the balloons fill, or sometimes blow off, or pop.
We do this over and over trying different surface drills like standard surface or emergency blow.

When we get a good fill, we measure how big the balloon got, (video wrapping a cloth tape around a balloon). take into account the pressure at however deep we will be then do that whole math thing and figure out how much air is going into the ballast tanks.

Now we don’t just blast air into all the tanks all at once. It’s done in patterns. That keeps things stable. Using the balloons let us directly see if the right pattern is happening for the right voice command given to the submarine.

Now we know that when we dive, we can come back up again.
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