Dammit. Near lost a mouthfull of coffee on that one.
Finite-element simulation of the Titan’s implosion suggests a hoop-style failure as I had described in other threads, but with an interesting twist:
According to this simulation, the initial phase of the hoop failure occurred near the middle portion of the carbon-fiber hull, with the ends staying intact slightly longer, likely due to the added strength provided by the titanium rings that were epoxied on either end. It shows how the debris from the collapse may have been driven into the titanium end caps, and how the viewport window at the front end may have been blown outward by the impact of all the debris and seawater on the inner surface of the end cap.
Important also to note that the article author appears to be using the wrong units of time: he’s labeling his numbers as milliseconds, when it’s quite clear that he should be calling them microseconds
6 of one, 6,000 of the other.
“At 36005 milliseconds, the middle of the cylinder has collapsed to about half its diameter. Still, the submersible appears to be intact.”
36 seconds! So much for “near instantaneous”. That’s really a bad error for a professional to make.
At first I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, i.e. maybe it really was a slow ramp-up of external pressure over the first half a minute or so - but then I saw the difference in times between the first two images in the collapse sequence, and figured it surely had to be 1092 microseconds, not 1092 milliseconds.
Assuming the milli- or micro- second issue is just a textural error, and does not affect the simulation…
I find it fascinating that the titanium hemispheres are moving in towards each other. I would have thought the inrush of water would force them apart. But…obviously when the cylinder wall failed, the water pressure would force the hemispheres together. There should still be some force pushing out (the same force that crushed the people into jelly), but maybe not enough that the net force is still inward.
When the USS Scorpion imploded, the failure was at the transition between the aft tapered end of the submarine and the cylindrical section. The end section was driven into the middle section. It wasn’t the cylindrical wall that failed, but the joint. Of course, it was steel and not carbon fiber.
It looks like they’ve already corrected that in the article.
Corrections made on July 19, 2023: Time sequence changed to step time in milliseconds instead of increment.
So the article rescaled from (unstated) microseconds to milliseconds, and the timeline looks credible and consistent with “too fast for the victims to understand they were dying”.
Good on the corrections!
Obviously Dopers.
I found the link informative and worth the time to read it. Thank you.
This part stood out to me:
“Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.”
The sad thing here is literally everyone tried to stop him. The fact that he couldn’t be stopped is as concerning as the fact that he didn’t stop.
Burning Bridges from Kelly’s Heroes could have been his theme song. It sounds upbeat and inspiring from the melody, but when you actually pay attention to what’s being said in the lyrics, it’s clear that his life is an absolute train wreck.
As the world now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. “If you’re not breaking things, you’re not innovating,” he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. “If you’re operating within a known environment, as most submersible manufacturers do, they don’t break things. To me, the more stuff you’ve broken, the more innovative you’ve been.”
No matter their name, but that is the huge red flag for “Entitled Asshole Tech Bro Narcisist for whom the laws don’t apply” … that became somewhat fashionable in the past 1-2 decades …
chances are they will not go out alone or silent …
Death by innovation. I think there’s a song in there somewhere. “For whom the (diving) bell tolls”
Two miles down, they entered the abyssal zone—so named because it’s the literal abyss.
I thought abyss either meant the bottom of the sea or the infinite void.
That big greenish tinted picture with people sitting in that sub/pipe in the middle of the article: Wow. I’ve built literal snowforts and crawled through aluminum culverts that had better construction.
“Would you ever agree to pilot a sub that wasn’t classed?” I asked.
“Never. Nope. No.”
Good advice!
@PastTense , thanks for sharing an excellent article.
The closing really stands out:
Thanks for that link; it’s an excellent explanation. (And I’ve ordered the author’s book through my library.)
More than ever, I’m glad that Stockton was aboard so he could die along with his victims. No amount of after-disaster punishment would ever have been sufficient had he not gone down with his folly.
well, at least it saves the world a lot of gaslighting …
the problem was not the craft, but rather xyz … (musky-trumpish mumble)