4 ms·
That 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
by phire 3y ago
That 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.
- jacquesm 3y ago> this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it. Yes, this is precisely it. None of this had to happen, it's a combination of greed and hubris.
- tedivm 3y agoApparently another sub was made with carbon fiber and it worked fine, however that one only had a single dive because they knew that it would lose strength after each dive. It may be feasible if they had replaced it more often (I don't think they ever replaced it, and there were former staff who claim to have brought up concerns about its condition).
- jacquesm 3y agoNo, even if the window failed the carbon shell would be blown to pieces due to the asymmetric load during the inrush phase. At that pressure difference there is nothing strong enough to withstand asymmetric loading. Time will tell. But plexiglass has better cycling properties than carbon fiber so my guess is that hull went first.
- ilyt 3y ago400 atmospheres. I doubt it would be gentle thru any material. That's only order of magnitude off water jet cutter
- jacquesm 3y agoAnd on a <1mm cross section. This was brutal beyond imagination.