Tubes Material for Rigid-hulled Inflatable Boat (RHIB)

Tubes-Inflatable

The tubes are usually constructed in separate sections to reduce the effect of a puncture, each with a valve to add or remove air. Larger boats (7m+) have 6 or more chambers with a valve for each chamber. The more chambers a boat has the more redundancy the boat is considered to have. This is because if only one chamber is damaged then the impact the damage has on the boat is much less.

Dark tubes often have pressure relief valves as the air inside them expands when exposed to sunlight. This prevents the tubes bursting from over pressure. Common materials for the tubes are Polyvinyl chloride, Polyurethane and Hypalon.

Polyvinyl chloride

As a material for building tubes, polyvinylchloride (PVC) has the disadvantage of lacking flexibility. To make it supple, an (more…)