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."
Re:What is the fascination with the Titanic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the fascination with the Titanic? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Schadenfraude: the immense hubris of the builders and operators of the Titanic were key factors in the loss of the ship. Stories where supreme arrogance is dealt a blow by nature are always fascinating to people.
2. A grand supposedly unsinkable ship sinking on her first voyage.
3. This accident prompted a sea change (pun intended) in maritime safety practices.
From an accident investigation standpoint, it is also the classic demonstrator of the accident chain. Many maritime and aviation accidents consist of a long chain of direct events that occur over a considerable period of time, and if any of the links been broken, the accident wouldn't have occurred.
Re:Who caes about rivets... (Score:2, Insightful)
Who knows, had it been built to spec, perhaps the ship would had fared better in the clash.
Re:How is this new information? (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 2: Crap that was expensive.
Step 3: Cut costs when building the Titanic.
Step 4: Profit
oh and... hit by a mine? I can easily explain how the Britannic went down...... it was hit by a freaking mine!!!
Re:Denial - When do we forgive & forget? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we can't forgive and forget the grudges, we are doomed to keep fighting over the same grudges for thousands of years. Bad idea.
Re:How is this new information? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the damage might of been survivable if a number of features had worked or been used. It was noted that a number of doors couldn't be sealed. Damage to two watertight compartments I can understand, maybe even three, but a couple more compartments remaining water tight might of made a huge difference. Another thing noted was that the nurses aboard had opened most of the portholes to ventilate the wards. If those had been closed, it would have slowed things as well.
Still, they did manage to get everyone off the ship, though there were casualties from boats launched without authorization that got hit by the propellors.
I do like your steps 1-4, they do make sense. Note: The Iceberg might of been the primary cause of the loss of the titanic, but I'll view it like a car and crash safety standards - sure, a crash isn't normal operating procedure, but safety in a crash is a required design measure for cars. Sturdy rivets not only increase the life of the ship, they also help it survive damage - whether that allows the ship to be saved like the USS Cole, or simply keeps it above water long enough to be evacuated.
Re:I saw a special on Discovery about this (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, I feel the same way about the current trend to snob companies that can be traced back to the days of slavery, and connections in the trade of. Especially when the connection is that a Bank bought out the assets of a failing bank back in the day, that had in the past bought out a bank that merged with a company that made loans for the purchase of slaves(not to mention homes, farm equipment, etc...). The final bank didn't even exist until after the civil war. Yes, slavery is and was wrong, but after a certain point we need to let it go.
Re:it would not have changed the casualty count (Score:3, Insightful)
Like anything, it might of made quite a bit of difference. Given a couple hours a dedicated crew might of been able to start fashioning crude lifeboats out of the very fixtures and boat superstructures. They might of been able to get some patches in(ala USS Cole) that delayed or even stopped the sinking.
Re:I have my own theory (Score:3, Insightful)
The rivet story is not about lifeboats. There were not enough lifeboats and nothing in the ship's design or construction would have changed that, barring a design that called for more lifeboats (but that wouldn't have fit in with common practice of the time). The rivet story is about keeping some part of the ship above water long enough for help to arrive before the people who were deprived of a lifeboat died of hypothermia, fatigue, and/or drowning.
Re:How is this new information? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps precisely because it sailed without problems ? That is, it never ran into situation where the strength of the rivets might be tested.
It's similar to how most people who don't use seatbelts don't die in traffick accidents. It's a risk-increasing factor, not an automatic death sentence. It only becomes the latter when an accident happens.
Re:How is this new information? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously not much wrong with the rivets then?
Re:Rivet me this.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Discussions of metallurgy and engineering seem quite apropos for "news for nerds" to me.
Too many comments here about how things aren't really "nerdy" enough because it doesn't fit someone's particular ideal of what is nerdy. You aren't the final arbiter on what is or isn't news for nerds.
Don't like the articles being posted here, go to the firehose and mod them down or stop reading.
Re:Titanic (2007) (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still perfectly current English.
Re:Titanic (2007) (Score:3, Insightful)
The sinking of the Titanic may not seem relevant after nearly a century, but it is still a fascinating study on preventable catastrophes and engineering processes. The technology involved may change, but people do not.
Compare the Titanic to the Challenger shuttle. Replace faulty rivets with faulty O-rings. Compare the hubris of Harland and Wolff ("unsinkable") to NASA management ("the probability of failure is necessarily less than 1 in 10,000") Both were high-pressure, high-publicity events trying to reglamourize their tasks. Both were cases of pushing the bounds of the operating envelope. In both cases, the failure modes of a small part were known to the engineers at the time. In both cases, the relevant data were lost in the bureaucracy.
The Titanic disaster will continue to happen so long as the same circumstances continue to align. The only way to prevent such things in the future is to study and heed past mistakes.
Personally, I think it is very riveting.
Re:How is this new information? (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree. They didn't test the rivets themselves, but new rivets with the same amount of slag.
Slag doesn't just develop underwater, it is present from the beginning.
The steel in the plating and rivets was bad even for the time it was constructed, not just in comparison to modern technology.