Credit, OCEANGATE EXPEDITIONS
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The pressure the Titan ship was subjected to could be equivalent to the pressure exerted by the weight of the Eiffel Tower.
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Authorities in the United States this Thursday reported the possible implosion of the Titan, the fivepassenger ship bound for the region where the remains of the ocean liner Titanic lie some 4,000 meters deep in North Atlantic waters. are located.
The US Coast Guard said fragments of the vehicle were found, suggesting the submersible was crushed in a “catastrophic” manner by sea pressure. She expressed her condolences on the death of the crew.
Now specialists are preparing to investigate what happened and what should have been done to prevent the tragedy by examining pieces found in the waters near the historic ship.
According to Ryan Ramsey, a former British Royal Navy submarine captain, authorities will piece together as many fragments as possible to create a complete picture of the sequence of events that led up to the tragedy.
“It’s not going to be any different than a plane crash, but in this case there’s no black box, so you can’t see the ship’s recent movements,” says Ramsey.
“But it is important to bring back as many parts as possible. Experts will be able to analyze the destroyed structure and any fractures that may have occurred, and perhaps summarize what really happened in those final moments.”
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The search for the submersible took five days
The five fragments found include “the rear deck of the submarine” and a cone from the front of the submarine.
They were found about 500 meters off the Titanic’s bow.
Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said it was too early to determine the timing of the implosion.
However, hours after finding the fragments, the US Navy said it had detected “an acoustic anomaly related to an implosion” shortly after Titan lost contact with the surface.
The submersible lost all communication with the outside world on Sunday.
On the sub were Stockton Rush, 61, founder of the company that owns the sub, OceanGate Expeditions; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and French explorer PaulHenri Nargeolet, 77.
All died in the accident.
The implosion theory
Key to the investigation will be the pieces of carbon fiber used to make part of the vehicle.
The big question is whether it suffered a structural failure that led to the rupture of the hull and hence possible implosion.
Each piece is closely examined under the microscope to analyze the direction of the carbon fiber filaments and look for cracks that indicate the exact spot where the break occurred.
Blair Thornton, Professor of Marine Autonomy at the University of Southampton, spoke to the BBC about what may have happened.
“In the event of a catastrophic failure of the main hull, the submersible would have been subjected to an incredibly high pressure equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Tower, tens of thousands of tons, crushing the ship,” he said.
“We speak in the main part of a very strong implosion.”
Will Kohnen, chair of the Society for Marine Technology’s manned underwater vehicle committee, said the vehicle “could have exploded inward within milliseconds.”
“It was a ‘friendlier’ ending than the incredibly difficult situation of spending four days in the cold, in the dark, in a confined space and without oxygen. So it would have happened very quickly. I don’t think anyone does.” “I should have had time to realize what happened,” he added.
Investigators must also analyze whether the accident was due to a lack of previously required inspections and maintenance.
Engineer Roderick A. Smith, Professor at Imperial College London, said that one of the most important fragments to answer this question was the section of carbon fiber at the point of fracture.
“Carbon fiber fails due to internal design flaws. The connections between carbon fiber and titanium require a very careful examination,” commented the expert.
Due to the severity of the implosion, it can be very difficult to determine the sequence of events. “Therefore, there is a need for full forensic recovery when possible,” he added.
Another potential source of information about what exactly happened to Titan could be hydrophones, underwater microphones used to search for evidence of illegal nuclear weapons.
These tools were used to determine that Argentina’s submarine San Juan imploded after it disappeared off the country’s coast in 2017.
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Many questions remain unanswered about what exactly happened to OceanGate’s Titan submersible.
It is possible that the hydrophones picked up the OceanGate submersible explosion and could tell us the exact time of the tragedy.
It is currently unclear which government agency will conduct the investigation as there is no protocol for these types of events involving submersibles.
According to Rear Admiral John Mauger, an investigation could be particularly complex because the incident took place in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean involving people of many nationalities.
What is a catastrophic implosion?
Text by Eric Fusil, Professor in the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Australia.
Most, if not all, submersibles and submarines operating at depth have a pressure vessel made of a single, high flow resistance metallic material.
It is usually made of steel for relatively shallow depths (less than 300 meters or more) or titanium for greater depths.
A thick steel or titanium pressure vessel is usually spherical in shape and can withstand expected crushing pressures down to 12,000 feet (about 4,000 meters), the depth at which the wreck of the Titanic lies.
The Titan, however, was different.
Its pressure vessel was made from a combination of titanium and carbon fiber composite. This is somewhat unusual from an engineering point of view, as titanium and carbon fiber are materials with very different properties in a deep diving context.
Titanium is elastic and can accommodate a wide range of stresses without leaving a measurable permanent stress after returning to atmospheric pressure.
It contracts to absorb compressive forces and expands again when those forces are released. A carbon fiber composite, on the other hand, is much stiffer and doesn’t have the same elasticity.
We can only speculate what happened to the combination of these two technologies, which dynamically don’t behave the same under pressure.
However, what we can almost say with certainty is that some kind of loss of integrity would have occurred due to the differences between these materials.
A material can “delaminate” which results in the separation of the reinforcing layers.
This would have caused a fault that would have triggered an immediate implosion due to underwater pressure.
In less than a second, the ship, being pushed down by the weight of a 12,000foot column of water, would have instantly imploded in all directions.