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 Exterior view of an open (wet) diving bell | |
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| Uses | Transport of surface supplied and saturation divers from the surface to the underwater workplace and back. |
A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers from the surface to depth and back in open water, usually for the purpose of performing underwater work. The most common types are the open-bottomed wet bell and the closed bell, which can maintain an internal pressure greater than the external ambient.[1] Diving bells are usually suspended by a cable, and lifted and lowered by a winch from a surface support platform. Unlike a submersible, the diving bell is not designed to move under the control of its occupants, or to operate independently of its launch and recovery system.
The wet bell is a structure with an airtight chamber which is open to the water at the bottom, that is lowered underwater to operate as a base or a means of transport for a small number of divers. Air is trapped inside the bell by pressure of the water at the interface. These were the first type of diving chamber, and are still in use in modified form.
The closed bell is a pressure vessel for human occupation, which may be used for bounce diving or saturation diving, with access to the water through a hatch at the bottom. The hatch is sealed before ascent to retain internal pressure. At the surface, this type of bell can lock on to a hyperbaric chamber where the divers live under saturation or are decompressed. The bell is mated with the chamber system via the bottom hatchway or a side hatchway, and the trunking in between is pressurized to enable the divers to transfer through to the chamber under pressure. In saturation diving the bell is merely the ride to and from the job, and the chamber system is the living quarters. If the dive is relatively short (a bounce dive), decompression can be done in the bell in exactly the same way it would be done in the chamber.
A third type is the rescue bell, used for the rescue of personnel from sunk submarines which have maintained structural integrity. These bells may operate at atmospheric internal pressure and must withstand the ambient water pressure.