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Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

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Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#51

Post by harambae »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #13
MobileVet wrote: post #3

> From all available sources, it is apparent that the viewport was designed and certified down to a depth of 1300 meters, not 4000 meters. Wow. What kind of hubris could look past that huge red flag? Apparently the kind that thinks it is interesting that it deforms by several inches and not scary

Sounds like a simple experiment to build a titanium sphere and fix the same spec'ed viewport on it and send it down to 4000 meters. Perhaps a lawyer for a plaintiff with deep pockets will call for such a demonstration to be performed.

How many times are you going to send it down?

The Titan made it a few times.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#52

Post by hef19898 »

ghostpepper wrote: post #44

> Consider the fact that most engineers can explain the cause of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse (if you can’t, you shouldn’t be an engineer), the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure, the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, and the space shuttle Challenger disaster Does anyone know of a good documentary about famous engineering failures? Bonus points if they actually go into detail about the scientific explanation, as oppose…

One thing that cannot be stressed enough, every system (I like the systems engineering way of thinking that goes beyond the single product to include everything from operations to maintenance, I come professionally from the point where Supply Chains meet design), every engineering project has to account for operating procedures, manufacturing procedures, training and human factors.

In all seriousness, the series about Chernobyl is great in driving that point across.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#53

Post by philjohn »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #41
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understood it, you do have a weight penalty for a sub. You need to get back up by powered movement, or down by it. You are limiting your dive time either way. They can’t use foam for flotation at that depth. There is a concrete like “synthetic foam” if you want unpowered rise to surface but it’s expensive. I read early on they wanted carbon to be light enough to get back up by releasing weights on powerloss. Fro…

> Nothing they did showed that they ever chose the more expensive option. It's so absurd. Deep sea tourism is going to be something only for the .1% for a while. They can afford a vessel that's 1000x more expensive. Your market is about 50 people. They've got unlimited money, basically. Why cheap out and die? I just don't get it.

I suspect their end goal was to sell deep sea subs to the oil and gas industry, and this was a testbed.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#54

Post by hef19898 »

engineer_22 wrote: post #49

This isn't an engineering assessment, at best it's speculation about what caused the loss of the Titan.

Whatever the exact failure mode, it was the most dangerous thing that let to Titan's destruction and the death of five people: the combination of stupidity and hubris.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#55

Post by mrcwinn »

intelVISA wrote: post #26
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wow. What kind of hubris could look past that huge red flag? The "bad-boy" disruptive innovator kind that doesn't play by the rules and that's worshiped in SV because he makes his wealth playing fast and loose around old stuffy bureaucratic regulations made by "evil old men" to gatekeep innovators like him from entering the naval market held by centuries year old corporations who actually know what they're doing. Th…

Wasted opportunity - could've been a top tier SaaS hustler with that perfect playbook.

This is a dead person who isn’t here to defend himself. I am certain that if he had a chance to reclaim life and correct a mistake, he would. As in airplane accidents, though it is sometimes hubris or poor communication, it is more often a chain of incorrect decisions that were at the time rationalized as safe. Nobody is trying to die.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#56

Post by buildsjets »

rich_sasha wrote: post #2

I know nothing, literally nothing, about material engineering, past what I can skim off wikipedia and ingest on cycling websites. But I always thought composite nonmetal materials are hard to test nondestructively, which is the main limiting factor for their use in aerospace. Metals can be X-rayed to assess their condition, carbon not. Is that wrong? What am I missing? Just curious.

The typical method to inspect composite parts is through-transmission ultrasonic. Essentially, two streams of water are aimed at the part from opposite sides, one stream of water has a ultrasonic generator embedded in it, the other side has a transducer, and you scan/raster the stream of water across the part to inspect it. There are limits on how thick of a part you can inspect with this method, and this hull significantly exceeds how thick we would use these materials in aerospace designs.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#57

Post by kabdib »

cassepipe wrote: post #21
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wow. What kind of hubris could look past that huge red flag? The "bad-boy" disruptive innovator kind that doesn't play by the rules and that's worshiped in SV because he makes his wealth playing fast and loose around old stuffy bureaucratic regulations made by "evil old men" to gatekeep innovators like him from entering the naval market held by centuries year old corporations who actually know what they're doing. Th…

Let's make a one lane tunnel underground to fix traffic. I am so smart. underground traffic jam

... underground traffic jam and battery fire

Count me out, I'm telecommuting.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#58

Post by anon_cow1111 »

kodah wrote: post #22

> It was previously stated by the CEO that each time he descended to that depth, the viewport deformed several inches inward. It takes an incredible level of density to ignore this once, but multiple times? Can someone tell me what happens to a human body when suddenly exposed to ~5000 psi? Edit: I looked it up. The human body almost instantly incinerates. It takes a matter of milliseconds.

>Edit: I looked it up. The human body almost instantly incinerates. It takes a matter of milliseconds.

This is most likely BS- consider that a shotgun shell is made from a low melting-temp plastic and handles higher pressures and temperatures without issue (and repeatedly if you're reloading them).

Probably your hair and light clothing would burn somewhat during an implosion, but would be extinguished as soon as the water hit it. Then it would stop being hair and light clothing just due to the kinetic energy of water hitting you at cannon-ball velocity.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#59

Post by hef19898 »

mrcwinn wrote: post #55
intelVISA wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasted opportunity - could've been a top tier SaaS hustler with that perfect playbook.

This is a dead person who isn’t here to defend himself. I am certain that if he had a chance to reclaim life and correct a mistake, he would. As in airplane accidents, though it is sometimes hubris or poor communication, it is more often a chain of incorrect decisions that were at the time rationalized as safe. Nobody is trying to die.

Well, Korean Air got a lot of flag, including dead air crews, after bad cockpit management let to hull losses. And OceanGate did fire people voicing concerns. They did ignore warnings from a lot experts. And Rush was actually proud of breaking rules and established design principles. He also decided to not certify Titan before taking paying passengers to the Titanic.

Re: Engineering assessment of the OceanGate Titan failure

#60

Post by buildsjets »

buildsjets wrote: post #56
rich_sasha wrote: post #2

I know nothing, literally nothing, about material engineering, past what I can skim off wikipedia and ingest on cycling websites. But I always thought composite nonmetal materials are hard to test nondestructively, which is the main limiting factor for their use in aerospace. Metals can be X-rayed to assess their condition, carbon not. Is that wrong? What am I missing? Just curious.

The typical method to inspect composite parts is through-transmission ultrasonic. Essentially, two streams of water are aimed at the part from opposite sides, one stream of water has a ultrasonic generator embedded in it, the other side has a transducer, and you scan/raster the stream of water across the part to inspect it. There are limits on how thick of a part you can inspect with this method, and this hull signif…

Here's an example. Appears to be inspecting a CFRP jet engine fan case, which are some of the thicker composite layups you see in aerospace. The way this method of inspection works, you also have to fabricate a part with known defects of various sizes (simulated with a little piece of Kapton tape in the layup) in order to determine the minimum size defect that the machine can detect for a given type of part.

https://tecscan.ca/ultrasonic-testing-defect-sizing-in-compo...

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