Inflatable spheroidal life raft with internal ballast tank

Abstract

The invention is an air-inflatable multi-wall multi-cell spheroidal-shell life raft that forms a shelter for occupants and that includes removable window covers to allow cross ventilation when desired and that is constructed of one or more air-or-gas-inflatable cells and/or air-or-gas-inflatable panels and contains an internal water-inflatable ballast tank located below an air-or-gas-inflated multi-cell floor cushion centered in the lowest point of the spheroidal shell thus providing the tank with the lowest center of gravity available within the shell. Key features new to the art are the inflatable spheroidal shape of the shell that forms the shelter enclosure, the water-inflatable internal ballast tank and the relationship of the shell to the ballast tank that insures that the raft will not capsize when occupants and their belongings are equally distributed within the raft.

1 . I claim as my invention a life raft constructed with air-inflatable panels that form a spherical shell (and/or any other spheroidal shape such as exampled by the shapes of a sphere, an egg, an elliptical capsule or other three dimensional forms of such nature) together with an internal water-inflatable ballast tank that will act synergistically with the spherical shell when placed in water and when the inflatable panels are inflated with air, gas or atmosphere to provide buoyancy and when the ballast tank is inflated with water to produce counterbalancing weight thereby creating counter forces that will ensure the stable verticality of the raft, all of which meaning that when the new art raft encounters the force of a wave, the buoyancy provided by the inflated upper shell of the raft becomes a force acting through a fulcrum about the center of the raft to hold the top of the raft up and the weight of the water-inflated ballast tank becomes an opposing force acting through a fulcrum about the center of the raft to hold the bottom of the raft down thus creating equal counter-forces that thereby ensure the stable verticality of the raft.  
   
   
       2 . I also claim that the structure of the raft is constructed with materials, methods and techniques normal to the inflatable raft industry and that the longitudinal joints formed by the overlapping of contiguous edges of the panels that form the shape of the raft are reinforced with high tensile strength tape such as produced by the 3M company and that the joints are extended beyond the top of the raft to form straps that are looped around a similarly constructed harness to allow a grappling hook or other such device to engage the harness during rescue operations and as will be required to support the full weight of the raft when fully occupied (including ballast water when unavoidable) to allow the raft to be hoisted over the side of a vessel or to be hoisted out of the water by ship or helicopter.