Advanced Structural Watertight Door System

U.S. Navy quick acting interior watertight door systems currently in service are heavy, unreliable and very expensive to maintain over the life cycle of the ship. The current Navy standard door system design is over 50 years old and suffers from a number of design deficiencies including the use of heavy corrosion prone materials, excessive number of penetrations, excessive number of parts and metal-on-metal contact during dogging operations. The complex dogging system consisting of rotating metal dogs and numerous tie bars with rotating joints require constant maintenance to keep the frictional parts lubricated and to keep all the components adjusted properly. Corrosion and metal-on-metal friction causes these parts to rapidly wear out and fail, ultimately requiring replacement and repair, resulting in high life cycle costs. This project will develop an innovative, cost effective, lightweight, corrosion and fire resistant, durable, quick acting composite interior watertight door (CIWD) system that will meet the structural load and environmental exposure design requirements for Navy interior watertight door systems. The lightweight CIWD system will significantly reduce life cycle costs by reducing the number parts and door penetrations, eliminating metal-on-metal contact and corrosion of locking mechanism parts, and the need for lubrication of moving parts.