Titanic sinks in minutes. The liner which just evaporated?

[hairysamarian]

Originally Posted by fscott

Capitan Smith was 20 miles, If I remember right, off the usual course would he have informed anyone on shore of that? It's a big ocean.

Certainly it is, and I mentioned that. Still, searchers aren't going to the one point on the globe they think the Titanic should be at, not find her and just go home. They're going to look around. As whatever search pattern they run expands, it seems probable that, even if they're 20 miles off (which isn't much on an Atlantic scale) to start, some debris would be found. Maybe not much, but finding any would tell them that something cataclysmic had happened.

[Tallest Skil]

Originally Posted by corditeman

By 22 k he meant 22 knots = 24.2 sea-miles per hour.

I know, but the rest of his theory makes that impossible to think.

[DerKaiser]

Originally Posted by Ed Costello

Is that impact speed of 22 knots taking into account likely deceleration?

Precisely this; the site seems to be assuming that the Titanic would ram itself into the iceberg at nearly top speed instead of what most theories say, which is that it would try and rapidly decelerate.

[corditeman]

The event went too fast initially for a rapid change in speed - 55,000 tons doesn't stop on a sixpence. A course change was all that was possible.

Tallest Skill, 'all studies' is not accurate. Captain Smith was under pressure to make his last maiden voyage as fast as possible. If all studies spoke of survival, why did the last TL on this refer to a catastrophic disaster?

'Titanic' would have been full of air when she hit the iceberg. When she hit the ocean bottom, estimates are that she hit at about 30 mph - BUT she would have been full of water by then. This incompressible medium would have vented through hatches, portholes and the shattered rear of the bow section. The stern shows signs of a far more catastrophic impact, which may be due to machinery-movement. Just thought I'd mention this.

[Torqumada]

Originally Posted by corditeman

'Titanic' would have been full of air when she hit the iceberg. When she hit the ocean bottom, estimates are that she hit at about 30 mph - BUT she would have been full of water by then. This incompressible medium would have vented through hatches, portholes and the shattered rear of the bow section. The stern shows signs of a far more catastrophic impact, which may be due to machinery-movement. Just thought I'd mention this.

Or air trapped in the sealed refrigeration units finally giving way.

Torqumada

[Derek Jackson]

Assume a more castastrophic collision, including the immediate loss of wireless, some peopel woudl have got off, some lifeboats would have been tghe right way up.

And the stopping of wireless traffic woudl be noticed.

Dozens maybe hundreds would eventually be rescued

[b12ox]

Originally Posted by Codae

That mass is wrong. E's using the acceleration due to gravity when that's entirely inappropriate.

What one should do is start with the linear amount of crumple (i.e. the front-to-back-length of the front compartments). Let's call it x.

Then the average deceleration of the ship is (v^2)/(2x), where v is 22 knots = 11.3 m/s. This comes out to, in m/s^2, 69.3 divided by x in meters.

That means that any particular point along the ship will have the compressive force necessary to decelerate the part of the ship's mass behind it at (69.3/x). That force is simply the acceleration times the mass.

To determine whether the force would exceed the capacity of the structure, we need to know the cross-sectional area of the steel that would be taking this blow.

I haven't been able to find a lot of these data, so I'll make some guesses.

For mass: Let's pretend that all of the 55000000 kg of the ship is behind the crumple zone.

For crumple distance: How about 10 meters?

For area: Let's go with something equivalent to 2-inch thick steel around the perimeter of a rectangle 92 feet wide and 59.5 feet high. That is, 4.69 square meters. I think this is probably on the low side.

With these numbers, we get a pressure of almost 750 megapascals. In pounds per square inch, it's 109000, significantly more than the "maximum strength of 56,000 psi in tension and compression" listed in the linked essay. I'm just not sure how reasonable my assumptions are--I tried to pick numbers that would be bad for the ship, and if reality is better than that by a factor of more than two my numbers imply that it doesn't get crushed.

You forget that a hit with the bow will turn the ship sidewise immediatley after impact releasing compression.The bow will get damaged and various lateral forces engaged as the ship pivots. It means unpredictable turn, possibly it will capsize when thrown against the iceberg to one side.Much depends on the shape of the iceberg.

[NHBL]

Since we're looking for a quick sinking, how's this?
Titanic turns hard, but a spur of ice rips into her hull, adjacent to the boiler room. Boiler explodes as ice-cold water pours in.

In any case, there would be floating wreckage, and lots of it. She's made of steel, but boats, decks, furniture, and more are all made of wood--wood floats.

IF there's a few survivors, they report a sudden KABOOM, and the wreck sinking fast.