Weak Rivets May Have Sped Sinking of Titanic 296
Pickens writes "Metallurgists studying the hulk of the Titanic argue that the liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship's builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. They say that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to have arrived, saving hundreds of lives. The team collected clues from 48 Titanic rivets and found many riddled with high concentrations of slag, a glassy residue of smelting that can make iron brittle. To test whether this extra slag weakened the rivets, scientists commissioned a blacksmith to make rivets to the same specifications as those used to join steel plates in the hull of the Titanic. When the plates were bent in the laboratory, the rivet heads popped off at loads of about 4,000 kg. With the right slag content they should have held up to about 9,000 kg. Even a few failures because of flawed metal would have been sufficient to unzip entire seams, because as faulty rivets popped, more stress would have been placed on the good ones, causing them to break in turn. The shipbuilder, which is still in existence, denies it all."
How is this new information? (Score:5, Informative)
Old news? (Score:4, Informative)
I havent read this in TFA but the show said that the reason a weaker rivet was used on the bow and stern is because their riveting machine cant access those parts correctly, thus the need to use manual riveting which uses weaker rivets. ( human force machine force)
Re:How is this new information? (Score:5, Informative)
The article states that the rivets were first talked about in 1998, but the shipbuilder disagreed. Since then, more people have looked at the rivets, and they have all said the same thing. Rivets were bad, they failed under pressure, and the ship sank. The only reason this is "news" is because they found corroborating evidence in the shipbuilder's old documents.
26 April 1999 (Score:5, Informative)
"Given the microstructure that we've seen, our best guess is that the rivets failed before the steel plates cracked, and the seams between plates simply opened up," Weihs says. [jhu.edu]
-- Johns Hopkins University Gazette, 26 April 1999
Re:Titanic (2007) (Score:2, Informative)
Ahem, unless there's been another Titanic film of exactly the same length made since, I believe you're referring to the 1997 Titanic [wikipedia.org]. Don't feel too bad though, it's only the highest grossing film of all time...
Denial (Score:3, Informative)
It would have sank even with perfect rivets! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:super ridiculous analysis and conclusion (Score:4, Informative)
So... you didn't actually read the article, did you?
Let's see : one particular ship only? No
No other ship had iron rivets? No
Iron rivets didn't fail elsewhere? No
Nobody noticed in 90 years? No
... in the parts of the Titanic that the builders thought needed the strongest rivets. Thirdly the rivet theory is pretty old. This story points out new corroborating evidence from the builders own paperwork (e.g. they didn't buy the best grade iron for these rivets). All in all I recommend reading TFA.
Ok that's enough.
As the article makes perfectly clear, iron rivets were already known to be more prone to failure if not made and inserted just right. Secondly steel rivets were already in use elsewhere and
Re:What is the fascination with the Titanic? (Score:2, Informative)
wikipedia is your friend. (Score:3, Informative)
the greatest of which both triples titanic and was in the last 20 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll [wikipedia.org]
4,300 - 4,500 - Doña Paz, (Philippines, 1987)(Estimates vary because of overloading and unmanifested passengers, only 21 survived [3][4][5])
3,920 - Jiangya ship explosion off Shanghai, (China, 1948)
1,863 - MV Joola (Senegal, 2002)
1,547 - Sultana (Mississippi River, 1865)
Re:How is this new information? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How is this new information? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is this new information? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How is this new information? (Score:4, Informative)
But also remember that the very idea of water tight compartments was new. Sailing ships, for instance, were pretty much one big compartment. My old navy ship, USS Midway CV-41, was built in WW II, and I vaguely remember being told it had 4000 water tight compartments. Warships in 1912 had more compartmentation than commercial ships, but they were still pretty primitive. Not only do (and did) warships have more compartmentation than commercial ships, 1912 was still early in the game.