Data on Neoprene compression at depths?

[FFMDiver]

Thanks for the info.

 

[PerroneFord]

moneysavr, I appreciate that, but Florida won't be the only place I dive! I may pick up an inexpensive shell suit over the holidays if I can, to learn, and maybe use on days like this weekend when the air temps will be in the 30s and 40s. Here it's not so much about the water temps, but that you don't want to be getting out of a nice spring at 70F into 40F air temps with no shelter around.

 

[redacted]

No data but a little mathmatical analysis may provide an answer. Compression should effect the thickness of the bubbles in the neoprene such that a bubble of radius 1 at the surface will have radius .8 at 2 atm (half the volume), .69 at 3atm (1/3 the volume), .63 at 4 atm and .58 at 5 atm. Assuming the thickness of your 7mm wetsuit is about 1mm of rubber (uneffected by compression) and 6mm of N bubbles, the thickness at 99 ft (4 atm) should be 1mm of rubber plus .63 times 6mm of gas bubbles for a total of about 4.8 mm.

I hate to resurect this just to admit I was wrong. But I was sitting in a rather slow meeting this AM and got to doodling and rethinking this. My logic works if you just have a chunck of neopreen and the volume of the bubbles is able to compress in all dimensions. But with the wetsuit, essentially all the compression must occur in the thickness dimension or the suit would have to shrink in length and width. So, at 4 ATM. that 7mm (1rubber + 6 N0 is going to have to absorb all the compression in the thickness dimension becomming a 1mm + .25 * 6mm or 2.5 mm suit. Brrrrr!

Sorry.