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Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

theguardian.com

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Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#231

Post by elliekelly »

swader999 wrote: post #200
jacquesm wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good guess, but I'd still like to see the final report if and when it is published and whether or not they manage to find the root cause. Likely the differential made the problem worse to the point that something gave but I suspect that there is a deeper underlying cause that made it sensitive to that difference in temperature to begin with. Either a material flaw, an assembly issue or something else.

I'm basing it off of what this guy is reporting. He seems to have an inside legit view. https://www.zerohedge.com/user/105370

Zero Hedge is not a reliable source of information. They also tend to push a lot of Russian fake news/propaganda. And of course Putin would love to have a major news item showing how the West’s gas sanctions have harmed the West.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#232

Post by jacquesm »

fwungy wrote: post #159
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fatigue from what? It's a stationary object housed indoors, not a car or plane that goes through several climatical, temperature and environmental changes to cause fatigue. Unless they were subjecting the tank to draining and filling cycles often, it seems more like a design/build fault that was a ticking time bomb from the start.

Building temperatures were mandated reduced due to energy sanctions. This put stress on an already sensitive structure and caused it to fail.

This is speculation, not established fact.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#233

Post by jacquesm »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #199
pixl97 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This here. The earth you live on is not solid, more like a squishy orange. When you build a heavy building on it, the building can sink further. Buildings themselves are subject to the dynamic loads of temperature, wind, their occupants square dancing, and more. Sometimes unexpected loads are added. A new highway or building built into a rock layer near it can subject the previous building to vibration and other forc…

This, and it's in particular true for this very part of Berlin, a city that is well known for literally having been "built on sand", see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palast_der_Republik#Abriss_zwi... which is about the demolition of the comparatively big building of the Palast der Republik which was just across the street on the other side of the river. That building had to be carefully and slowly dismantled to avoi…

Sand is - strangely enough - quite stable. Clay, peat and lots of other substrates are a lot less stable than sand and when building on them you need to take all kinds of precautions to ensure your foundation doesn't one day go for a walk.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#234

Post by jacquesm »

toast0 wrote: post #193
WhackyIdeas wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We took our cat in, but she absolutely hated it. Then we thought she escaped for a few hours until we found her expertly hiding underneath some machinery. In Costco they sell this cat food called ‘Maintenance cat’. Maybe we need one of those cats.

Yeah... around here shelters separate out 'barn cats' from 'pet cats', barn cats are tolerant of people but not really socialized to appreciate people. Rather than taking an existing pet cat and putting him or her to work, I'd try adopting a barn cat and putting them to work. Often, barn cats do retire and become pet cats towards the end of their life, if circumstances allow. Of course, cats can cause a different sor…

Barn cats are pocket sized tigers. I've seen one filet a grown up guy that tried to evict it. He looked like he'd been run over by a harvester.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#235

Post by jacquesm »

rjzzleep wrote: post #12
jl6 wrote: post #3

Wow, how do you make pieces of glass that size?

It looks to me as if they're actually a lot of smaller pieces put together, but maybe I see it incorrectly. Maybe one day, architects will stop designing things that are structural liabilities, or engineers actually get to say no to it before construction starts.

I don't understand your comment. Architects did not design this fishtank, engineers did, ones that specialize in such constructions. Whether or not the design was at fault or there were construction or maintenance issues or the tank was modified out-of-spec, whether there was damage due to the recent renovations are all open questions.

Structural engineers take their work very seriously, much more seriously than your typical software person and you can bet that any and all lessons learned from this incident will be incorporated into future designs. They don't just slap stuff together for the laughs and call it a day.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#236

Post by jacquesm »

zimpenfish wrote: post #133
wyuenho wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly have we learned that’s valuable from this news?

At least one person learnt of the existence of "static fatigue". Which I'd count as a win, personally.

And that you got away ;) Great comment upthread by the way.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#237

Post by msrenee »

WhackyIdeas wrote: post #188
toast0 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered outsourcing? To a cat (or cats) or a pest control company. The pest control company will probably check and close off opportunities for mice to enter the unit, which cats won't do, so you might want to consider retaining both options. Warehouse cats can be nice warehouse companions too (depending on what happens in the unit). I've had to do some mouse removal work in my forest adjacent home, and i…

We took our cat in, but she absolutely hated it. Then we thought she escaped for a few hours until we found her expertly hiding underneath some machinery. In Costco they sell this cat food called ‘Maintenance cat’. Maybe we need one of those cats.

I'm dying at the idea of a maintenance cat. In my mind he's wearing little overalls and carrying a wrench.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#238

Post by jvandonsel »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #154
barbegal wrote: post #117

From an engineering perspective these sorts of acrylic tanks are a nightmare to ensure they are safe. The seams are impossible to inspect rigorously so the only real way of checking that they are safe is to load them with an excess pressure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_test ). This can't be done with a tank of this size so the engineers can only real fall back on giving the tank excessive safety margin…

What's the best material for a tank like this, if not acrylic? Normal glass? Not educated on this subject.

Transparent aluminum

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#239

Post by browningstreet »

pcan77 wrote: post #210
tazjin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt It probably helped that it happened at 6AM ...

as someone who has an aquarium, i'm amazed it didn't happen in the middle of the night. Any time I've had an overflow issue or something, it's always in the middle of the night and my water sensor is blaring

I’m renting a house with three bathrooms. Two of the three toilets, on separate occasions, spontaneously cracked and leaked water. Both happened between 5am and 6am-ish. I was awake for one and heard it, and woke up shortly after the other one happened and found my kitchen flooded. The cracks in the two toilet water tanks were identical. Given the comments about the water temp and lobby temps, I’m guessing that hour and temperature changes could be linked.

I was able to get the owner of the house to see the wisdom of replacing the third toilet water tank.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#240

Post by nuc1e0n »

barbegal wrote: post #117

From an engineering perspective these sorts of acrylic tanks are a nightmare to ensure they are safe. The seams are impossible to inspect rigorously so the only real way of checking that they are safe is to load them with an excess pressure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_test ). This can't be done with a tank of this size so the engineers can only real fall back on giving the tank excessive safety margin…

They should've made this tank with transparent aluminum.
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