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In the press-conference they said both end bells were found separately - no mention of whether the window was still intact. It'll be interesting to see the fail
by jonah 3y ago
In the press-conference they said both end bells were found separately - no mention of whether the window was still intact. It'll be interesting to see the failure analysis.
[Edit] Link to video with a description of the major debris found: https://youtu.be/A0xJ220Fod4?t=263 https://youtu.be/A0xJ220Fod4?t=263
"the front end-bell of the pressure hull - that was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event"
"the aft end-bell which basically...comprised the totality of that pressure vessel"
- lamontcg 3y agoThe root cause was just hubris. Ironically.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoSounds like if the bells were found, but not the tube, we have the answer. If the window failed, I would expect to have none or one bell separated from the tube, but not both. I imagine the glass being shot inside the tube and the water jet would vaporize the people inside and maybe blow one bell off. If the tube failed, would expect both bells to be sitting on the ocean floor. I’m not a professional mechanical engineer, just a guess.
- hex4def6 3y agoAgree, although if the bells are destroyed, that doesn't mean they were the failure mechanism either. It's entirely possible the tube collapsing would result in a huge water hammer effect on the bells, causing them to be shattered. It's going to be interesting to see to what level (if any), this gets root-caused. It's not trivial to do when stuff is miles down on the ocean floor. I assume there isn't a regulatory requirement (like a plane crash). I wonder if it's even needed from an ensuing lawsuit situation; it seems like there's plenty of evidence to support a negligence argument, without getting into the specifics of whether it's the hull that failed or the diving bell, etc.
- civilitty 3y agoThe NTSB is responsible for investigating maritime accidents especially if they result in death but I think it depends on which flag the mothership sailed under.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoThe bells are titanium iirc, I wouldn’t think they would shatter. I thought the report is they were 100+ feet apart, it’s a crazy amount of force.
- guax 3y agoThey could just glide apart from whatever depth the implosion happened. The force is unfathomable but the distance is not related to it I think.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoThat’s fair. In my head they were at the bottom when this happened, but there is no reason to think that other than I imagined it.
- polynomial 3y agoWow, that's incredible. At what depth does the water pressure reach the level that will vaporize human bodies?
- jacquesm 3y agoPretty good guess though.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoTurns out it was. Only 20 years of composites work and I can make an OK guess! Report I saw was de-lam or otherwise failed tube. I wonder if it made a noise first? Like I assume that depth you get all sorts of noises anyhow but a 5” carbon tube, I wonder if it crackled first?
- polynomial 3y agoThis is a really great question.
- phire 3y agoThat suggests it was the carbon fibre shell that failed. If it was the Plexiglas that failed (or other part of the end bell assembly), I'd expect the pressure to quickly equalise though the failure point and the carbon fibre shell to remain relatively intact and hold those end bells together. Though, I'm not an engineer. Maybe the rapid change in loading could result in the carbon fibre shattering.
- adamredwoods 3y agoI'm curious why Stockton Rush thought carbon fibre would be enough? I'm trying to find out how it would be sufficient. I'm sure we'll find out more later why it failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanGate#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanGate#Design_and_construct...
- rich_sasha 3y agoDoesn't directly answer your question, but somewhere I read that by using carbon fibre, the craft was positively buoyant on its own (then weighed down with ballast). Otherwise it would need expensive pressure-resistant floatation devices.
- phire 3y ago"Titan is equipped with a real-time acoustic monitoring system, which OceanGate claims can detect the onset of buckling in the carbon fiber hull prior to catastrophic failure." I see a number of potential flaws with that plan. You are assuming it will fail in a way that produces a warning and then stays intact enough to resurface. You are also relying on an electronic device to not fail. And audio processing algorithms... how many of these carbon fibre pressure vessels did they test to destruction to get test data? Zero? "Rush holds a patent on the system." Ok.... I guess that explains it. I'm getting an impression of real "I'll just invent a magic device that makes it safe" energy here.
- salawat 3y agoI concur. I find that the odds of an at-scale, full production version of such a system being implemented with what was shown to be available in the vessel is highly dubious. Besides which, it's entirely possible as well that adhesive was progressively chemically compromised, with no attempts to measure it... I can think of myriad directions to investigate Then again, I don't have access to schemata either.... So I should really just stop. It just kills me though, because this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it.