Saturation diving is a diving technique that allow divers to remain at great depth for long periods of time, by living under pressure in special living chamber complexes affixed to a diving support vessel, oil platform or other floating work station. A diving support vessel is a ship that is used as a floating base for professional diving projects. ... An oil platform is a large structure used to house workers and machinery needed to drill and then produce oil and natural gas in the ocean. ...

"Saturation" refers to the fact that the diver's tissues have absorbed the maximum partial pressure of gas possible for that depth due to the diver being exposed to breathing gas at that pressure for prolonged periods. This is significant because once the tissues become saturated, the time to ascend from depth, to decompress safely, will not increase with further exposure. In Chemistry, the partial pressure of a gas in a mixture or solution is what the pressure of that gas would be if all other components of the mixture or solution suddenly vanished without its temperature changing. ... Air is the most common and only natural breathing gas. ... Pressure (symbol: p) is the force per unit area acting on a surface in a direction perpendicular to that surface. ...

Commonly, saturation diving allows professional divers to live and work at depths greater than 50 metres / 165 feet for days or weeks at a time. This type of diving allows for greater economy of work and enhanced safety for the divers because the diving team is compressed to depth during the "descent" just once, where they remain, living in a pressurized environment equal to the depth of water they will be working in. Professional diving is diving for payment. ... Pressure (symbol: p) is the force per unit area acting on a surface in a direction perpendicular to that surface. ...

The "Saturation System" typically comprises a living chamber, transfer chamber and submersible decompression chamber, which is commonly referred to in commercial diving and military diving as the "diving bell". The system incorporates various sub-systems, such as hydraulics, pneumatics, electrics, electronics and other mechanical systems. The entire system is managed from a "control van", where depth, chamber atmosphere and other system parameters are monitored and controlled. The diving bell is the "elevator" or "lift" that transfers divers from the system to the work site. Typically, it is mated to the system utilizing a removable clamp and is separated from the system tankage bulkhead by a "trunking space", a kind of tunnel, through which the divers transfer to and from the bell. At the completion of work or a mission, the saturation diving team is decompressed gradually back to atmospheric pressure by the slow venting of system pressure, thus the process involves only one "ascent", thereby mitigating the time-consuming and comparatively risky process of in-water, staged decompression normally associated with non-saturation ("bounce diving") operations. A decompression chamber is a pressure vessel used in surface supplied diving to allow the divers to complete their decompression stops at the end of a dive on the surface rather than underwater. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Underwater diving. ... Military diving is a branch of professional diving carried out by world armed forces. ... Diving bell A diving bell is a cable suspended watertight chamber, open at the bottom, that is lowered underwater to operate as a base or a means of transport for a small number of divers. ... Hydraulics is a branch of science and engineering concerned with the use of liquids to perform mechanical tasks. ... Pneumatics, from the Greek πνευματικός (pneumatikos, coming from the wind) is the use of pressurized air in science and technology. ... The article on electrical energy is located elsewhere. ... The field of electronics is the study and use of systems that operate by controlling the flow of electrons (or other charge carriers) in devices such as thermionic valves and semiconductors. ... Decompresion has several meanings: in physics, decompression is the release of pressure and is the opposition of compression in medicine, scuba diving and aviation, decompression can refer to a sickness in scuba diving, decompression can refer to a stop, a chamber, a buoy, a trapeze, tables or a computer in... diurnal (daily) rhythm of air pressure in northern Germany (black curve is air pressure) Atmospheric pressure is the pressure above any area in the Earths atmosphere caused by the weight of air. ...

The divers use surface supplied umbilical diving equipment, utilizing deep diving breathing gas, such as helium and oxygen mixtures, stored in large capacity, high pressure cylinders. The gas supplies are plumbed to the control van, where they are routed to supply the system components. The bell is fed via a large, multi-part umbilical that supplies breathing gas, electricity, communications and hot water. The bell also is fitted with exterior mounted breathing gas cylinders for emergency use. Surface supplied diver at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California Surface supplied diving refers to divers using equipment supplied with breathing gas using an umbilical cord from the surface, often from a diving support vessel but possibly, indirectly via a diving bell. ... Air is the most common and only natural breathing gas. ... 12 litre and 3 litre steel diving cylinders A diving cylinder or SCUBA tank is used to store and transport high pressure breathing gas as a component of an Aqua-Lung. ...

Saturation diving (or more precisely, long term exposure to high pressure) can potentially cause aseptic bone necrosis, although it is not yet known if all divers are affected or only especially sensitive ones. The joints are most vulnerable to osteonecrosis. The connection between high pressure exposure and osteonecrosis is not fully understood. Aseptic bone necrosis (ABN), also called avascular necrosis or osteonecrosis, is where bone and marrow die in the absence of an infective agent. ...

Increased use of underwater ROVs and AUVs for routine or planned tasks means that saturation dives are becoming less common, though complicated underwater tasks requiring complex manual actions remain the preserve of the deep-sea saturation diver. It has been suggested that Remote control vehicle be merged into this article or section. ... An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is a robot which travels underwater. ...

For saturation diving in fiction, see The Abyss (1989), or Sphere (1998). The Abyss is an award-winning science fiction film from 1989, written and directed by James Cameron, starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...