Structural Design Equation for a Box-shape Pressure Compensated Chamber of Pilot Mining Robot

A pressure compensated chamber of a pilot mining robot isolates and protects an electrical-electronic system from the ambient highly pressured water. Since the inner pressure of the chamber is compensated with outer water pressure using hydraulic oil and pressure compensator, there exists a pressure difference, less than 1 bar, between outer and inner surface. The structural safety of the chamber is obtained relatively easier than the canister type which inner pressure is kept as the atmospheric pressure. However, due to the adoption of box shape for space efficiency and usage of the transparent engineering plastic viewport for checking inner circumstance, the viewport can be largely deformed. This large deformation can cause an additional tensile force, called the prying force, to the bolt-flange connection parts of the viewport. In this paper, we suggest the structural design equation considering the prying action for designing the structure of a box-shape pressure compensated chamber.