MHB SE Class 10 Science: What Steel Was Used in the Titanic?

[CaptainBlack]

I know that some of our members have an interest in the loss of the Titanic in 1912. So I am posting a link to an article in/on Science Daily on the steel used in the Titanic. Also look at the related stories links on the right of the page for more related material.

CB

 

[chisigma]

Very interesting the article of Richard Corfield The perfect storm from which I report...

... the Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews was on board and was asked by Capt. Smith to accompany him to assess the damage immediately after the collision. The impact had been on the for'ard starboard side below the water line and once Andrews had discovered the extent of the damage he warned Smith that since more than four compartments had been ruptured (six in fact had been breached) "it was a mathematical certainty that the ship would sink"...

A first 'surprise' of me is the number of breached compartments [six] instead of five that I remembered, but it not the main detail. The sentence of Andrews has been: it is mathematical certainty that Titanic will sink. Now we are in a mathematical site and it would be ‘natural’ to arise the questions...

a) with the first six compartments flooded really there was no 'mathematical chance' to save the Titanic?...

b) with the first six compartments flooded really there was no 'mathematical chance' to delay the sinking of the Titanic and save most possible people?...

Kind regards

$\chi$ $\sigma$

 

[CaptainBlack]

Very interesting the article of Richard Corfield The perfect storm from which I report...

... the Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews was on board and was asked by Capt. Smith to accompany him to assess the damage immediately after the collision. The impact had been on the for'ard starboard side below the water line and once Andrews had discovered the extent of the damage he warned Smith that since more than four compartments had been ruptured (six in fact had been breached) "it was a mathematical certainty that the ship would sink"...

A first 'surprise' of me is the number of breached compartments [six] instead of five that I remembered, but it not the main detail. The sentence of Andrews has been: it is mathematical certainty that Titanic will sink. Now we are in a mathematical site and it would be ‘natural’ to arise the questions...

a) with the first six compartments flooded really there was no 'mathematical chance' to save the Titanic?...

b) with the first six compartments flooded really there was no 'mathematical chance' to delay the sinking of the Titanic and save most possible people?...

Kind regards

$\chi$ $\sigma$

IIRC the Titanic was designed to survive four compartments flooding. With six the top edges of the next bulkheads would not stay above water.

CB

 

[CaptainBlack]

I suppose also of interest is the loss of the Titanic's (half-)sister the Brittannic to a submarine laid mine in the Kea Channel off of Attica.

The Britannic should have been better able to survive underwater damage than Titanic as the post Titanic improvements (raising some of the watertight bulkheads and double bottom/hull under the machinery rooms, and better lifeboat facilities) were built in, rather than retro-fitted as in the Olympic.

In principle it should have been survivable, except for damage to what should have been watertight doors rendered some of them otherwise... Commercial vessels are rarely designed with mining-effect in mind even today. The mining-effect was not really appriciated until the early '40s (and then only partially) when HMS Belfast (just) survived mining and a proper assessment of the damage made.

View attachment 133

 

[chisigma]

IIRC the Titanic was designed to survive four compartments flooding. With six the top edges of the next bulkheads would not stay above water.

CB

That is exact and about the 'compartments flooding' I have in mind to do some consideration later. About the figure of Thomas Andrews [the 'Titanic's designer'...] some line has to be written. First Titanic's designer was Alexander Caslisle but he was substituted because 'not particularly susceptible' to Harland & Wolff's recommendations in terms of 'cost and shipbuilding time reduction'. Andrews succeeded to Carlisle and, in order to comply to the directives, had the brilliant idea to reduce from 64 to 16 the number of lifeboats [the Titanic by definition was 'unsinkable'...] and to 'lighten' considerably the quality control procedures so that most of the used rivets were made with steel with excessive degree of impurity and therefore breakable. Under this point of view the Titanic's story is similar to the USS Thresher's story. The USS Thresher was the first of a new class of nuclear submarines with extremely advanced performance. It was launched in July 1960 and was a very 'quality jump' of the underwater weapon of the US Navy. Its long range missiles and its extremely advanced passive sonar system made it a formidable killer of the Russian SSBN submarines of the Hotel and Golf classes. As in the case of Titanic, the necessity to arrive 'as soon as possible' conditioned the construction and several steps of quality control were 'neglected'. The consequence of that was that on 10 April 1963, during the deep-diving test, the failure of a joint in a salt water piping system caused high-pressure water spraying that shorted out one of the many electrical panels, which in turn caused a shutdown of the reactor, with a subsequent loss of propulsion and subsequent loss of the submarine. On the sea as on the land history doesn't teach enough...

Kind regards

$\chi$ $\sigma$