A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
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Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#2Hope this interests someone else, the size of the engineering seems impressive.
I've had to cut down the title slightly to make it fit the HN character limit; hopefully it's still readable.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#3I find it pretty fascinating that even though the scale is absolutely enormous, the whole thing can be described in only one or two sentences. "Build a very large crane on a barge, then slice the ship into pieces and transport each section somewhere else".
Kinda like S3 is "a very large static file host", it is technically true but the scale involved makes everything a lot more involved.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#4What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#5What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
At these scales, and being able to use the hull's weight against itself, that chain is plenty "sharp" just by itself, I guess (sharpness being the ability to concentrate force on a comparatively small surface area). Adding teeth to the chain would probably not be worth it and/or they would just dull or break soon anyway.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#6What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
The chain is made of harder (by a substantial enough margin to not wear through too quickly) metal than the ship. Also, the cross section of any given link is much thicker than any one piece of steel in the ship so it doesn't really need to cut efficiently, it just kind of crunches and tears the ship out of the way using the ship's own weight.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#7What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
It is. Between being harder than the iron of the hull, and the links, it acts like a chainsaw. The teeth are not as ideally formed, but it doesn't really matter as ideally formed teeth are not really practical anyway because of size (they need to be huge so as to not load up with chips).
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#8What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
At these scales, and being able to use the hull's weight against itself, that chain is plenty "sharp" just by itself, I guess (sharpness being the ability to concentrate force on a comparatively small surface area). Adding teeth to the chain would probably not be worth it and/or they would just dull or break soon anyway.
Also using an alternative line an abrasive cable would not make sense either. If friction causes it to tear it would need complete replacing, which would be plenty $$$.
Instead, with a chain they just replace a couple of broken links and back on track. Which is apparently what they've done:
> Unfortunately, the chain actually broke during the cutting operation. “Approximately 25 hours into the cut, the cutting chain broke,” St. Simons Incident Response writes on its website. Luckily, there were no injuries and there was no damage to the equipment. The team simply fixed the chain’s broken link, inspected the other links for signs of fatigue, and continued on.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#9Hope this interests someone else, the size of the engineering seems impressive. I've had to cut down the title slightly to make it fit the HN character limit; hopefully it's still readable.
This is great, thanks for sharing.
It makes me think that as engineers eager to fix problems or building stuff we sometimes go for the solution we are most used to from past experiences (eg. use a huge saw to cut through) instead of thinking of the simplest & most cost-effective (eg. use a chain instead).
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#10Really fascinating! And I can only imagine the infernal noise this process produces, with a gigantic "chainsaw" and a whole ship as a resonance chamber...