Titanic Disaster--Even Worse

As far as I remember, the last thread on this had a few conclusions:

One here had calculated amount of energy hitting nose first. As I recall it, it just might have been enough to crumble right into compartment 2-3. That would be the crumble zone.

More serious would be energy transferred into the rivets holding all the plates together. Although the method used was like 'double-rivetting' the question whether they could hold up to that pressure was deemed not feasible.

In essence: The plates would have fallen off and Titanic would have disappeared in minutes. Very difficult to keep sailing without a hull, only the spars. The view would be great from all cabins, but not long-lasting.
 
It is a calculation of the kinetic energy of the collision:

"""""Here's my calculation.

From Wikipedia, the Titanic displaced 52,310 long tons, which is 5.315x107 kg. I couldn't find the impact speed, but taking your 20 mph, it's 8.941 m/s. Kinetic energy is 1/2 m v2 = 2.124x109 J. That converts to 0.5077 tons of TNT. By way of comparison, that's equivalent to a little less than two Mk-48 torpedoes. """"

That should do the trick, I think
 

SsgtC

Banned
It is a calculation of the kinetic energy of the collision:

"""""Here's my calculation.

From Wikipedia, the Titanic displaced 52,310 long tons, which is 5.315x107 kg. I couldn't find the impact speed, but taking your 20 mph, it's 8.941 m/s. Kinetic energy is 1/2 m v2 = 2.124x109 J. That converts to 0.5077 tons of TNT. By way of comparison, that's equivalent to a little less than two Mk-48 torpedoes. """"

That should do the trick, I think
It's actually higher. Titanic was doing about 21 knots at the time of the collision. That equals to just over 24 MPH
 
It is a calculation of the kinetic energy of the collision:

"""""Here's my calculation.

From Wikipedia, the Titanic displaced 52,310 long tons, which is 5.315x107 kg. I couldn't find the impact speed, but taking your 20 mph, it's 8.941 m/s. Kinetic energy is 1/2 m v2 = 2.124x109 J. That converts to 0.5077 tons of TNT. By way of comparison, that's equivalent to a little less than two Mk-48 torpedoes. """"

That should do the trick, I think
What speed was the iceberg doing and what was its mass?
 
The iceberg was, for all intents and purposes, stationary. At most a quarter to half a mile an hour. And it's mass, based on photos of the suspected iceberg, would be several million tons.

So, you have a 50,000 ton ship (give or take) going 22 knots ramming full speed basically into a mountain of ice - hence the name - that weighs millions of tons. Jesus.

I'm no Isaac Newton but his Laws of Motion tell us that all that force created means very bad things happen to that ship. I said yesterday that the ship sinks in minutes. I may revise that to "the ship sinks in seconds" as all that force essentially disintegrates the hull/keel and especially the rivets used to hold her together.

Another factor. The ship is moving at 22 knots, which means everything on and in the ship is moving at 22 knots as well. When the ship hits the iceberg, it stops moving pretty much instantly - but everything on the ship keeps moving at 22 knots until it is acted by a force that causes it to stop moving. So, not only do you have people smashing into walls (which, while bad, is the least of their problems) but you have everything big on the ship - like the boilers/engines especially - rip free from their bases and tear through what's left of the hull, causing even more holes, each the size of a boiler.

So yeah, very bad things happen to the ship if it hits the iceberg at full speed.
 
Well, remember one thing. The ship will crumble. so it is a measured deceleration. Probably very uncomfortable after all.

Not so sure if the boilers would rip loose as we are talking a crumble zone of many meters. The deceleration should not affect heavy machinery bolted to the 'floor'.

That said, insofar as Titanic was rivetted steel plates, the force would be on the rivets. …. And we do know that story.

If Titanic had been electro welded, nose first might have been a different story.

For all calculations. The iceberg is stationary. Nothing can move that thing around.

Just for holding this image in the head: Two mk 48 torpedoes hitting the bow of any ship.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Well, remember one thing. The ship will crumble. so it is a measured deceleration. Probably very uncomfortable after all.

Not so sure if the boilers would rip loose as we are talking a crumble zone of many meters. The deceleration should not affect heavy machinery bolted to the 'floor'.

That said, insofar as Titanic was rivetted steel plates, the force would be on the rivets. …. And we do know that story.

If Titanic had been electro welded, nose first might have been a different story.

For all calculations. The iceberg is stationary. Nothing can move that thing around.

Just for holding this image in the head: Two mk 48 torpedoes hitting the bow of any ship.
Not really. Titanic had a rigid structure. There was no engineered crumple zone to absorb the shock of impact. So while yes, the first couple of compartments would get crushed, the shock of impact would travel down the length of the keel, rippling plates and popping rivets as it went. The shock would likely be strong enough (especially when combined with sudden deceleration) to "rip" machinery from their mountings. In particular the boilers. The engines would probably stay in place as they were mounted differently to be able to absorb the thrust from the propellers.

Slamming head first into the berg would have also collapsed the funnels and masts, which were mainly held in place with cables. The shock of impact would have thrown the funnels and masts forward, snapping the stays and dropping the funnels onto the deck (and coincidentally onto the officers quarters and radio room). When the masts collapse, they'll take the wireless airals down with them. Meaning no radio signals. So even if the hull isn't opened from stem to stern, they can't tell anyone about it or ask for help. Incidentally, when the funnels collapse onto the deck, they'll crush the lifeboats and destroy the davits. So even if there's time to abandon ship (doubtful) there won't be any boats to abandon in.
 
Murdock the Titanic into a turn the moment he realized they were scraping against the iceberg. If he hadn't done that the iceberg would have ruptured more compartments.
With all the boiler rooms an engine rooms being flooded power would be lost before a S.O.S could be sent out. The loss of power would be the first sign that something was wrong.
The wireless set was sending out personal messages at the time of the collision, the only indication that something amiss would be when the Titanic stop transmitting in the middle of a message.
When all the engineering spaces flooded and no power that would mean no pumps.
The Titanic would sink rapidly , if it took on a sharp list to starboard no lifeboats could have been launched.
 
One of the worst things that could have happened would have been if either the Carpathia or the Californian, had it reacted with more urgently, had also struck one of the icebergs in the area and sunk while en route to rescue Titanic.
 
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SsgtC

Banned
One of the worst things that could have happened would have been if either the Carpathia or the Californian had also struck one of the icebergs in the area and sunk while en route to rescue Titanic.
Californian was stopped for the night. So there was no risk of her hitting a berg. Carpathia, OTOH? That was a very real possibility. She just barely avoided several icebergs en route to Titanic
 
Slamming head first into the berg would have also collapsed the funnels and masts, which were mainly held in place with cables. The shock of impact would have thrown the funnels and masts forward, snapping the stays and dropping the funnels onto the deck (and coincidentally onto the officers quarters and radio room). When the masts collapse, they'll take the wireless airals down with them. Meaning no radio signals. So even if the hull isn't opened from stem to stern, they can't tell anyone about it or ask for help. Incidentally, when the funnels collapse onto the deck, they'll crush the lifeboats and destroy the davits. So even if there's time to abandon ship (doubtful) there won't be any boats to abandon in.

Seems like the funnels collapsing like that would also give a possibility of fires breaking out all over the main deck. You'd probably get a belch of sparks and cinders blown from the engines when the crash occurs, and if the funnels collapse, then it gets sprayed onto the kindling that used to be the boats...
 
We had these arguments last time and most are still nonsense.

The energy calculation is meaningless. What matter is distribution of deformation. There is no great "shock" of impact, there's an increasing deceleration as the bow crushes. The rigid structure, once initially deformed, becomes much less resistant to further deformation, hence almost all deformation is concentrated at the bow. Hence every picture of a ship after a head-on collision.

It's almost certainly insufficient to collapse the funnels, as they have to sustain storm wind loads. Nor is it sufficient to damage the boilers - the shock of impact is low and the deceleration inadequate, at about 2 m/s/s for a 30 m crush zone - 0.2 g. Enough to throw the unprepared from their feet and break bones in the unlucky, but little more.

The great unknown is the "sharpness" of the crush boundary. A diffuse one means sheared rivets and popped plates away from the crushed bow. However, the first three compartments extended 46 m, so that's a lot of space to take up the crush and proximal deformation zones. Furthermore, in the head-on collision pictures, you see a crushed bow and no evidence of deformation much further back. The greatest problem is likely to be small-scale deformation that prevents watertight doors from being closed properly, but Titanic likely survives.
 
Californian was stopped for the night. So there was no risk of her hitting a berg. Carpathia, OTOH? That was a very real possibility. She just barely avoided several icebergs en route to Titanic
Carpathia's rescue was daring but risky, especially given that she was herself carrying 700 passengers. The good news is that Carpathia did at least have enough lifeboats to accommodate all of its own passengers provided there was enough time for them to get off. The ship was smaller than Titanic so it probably wouldn't have been as chaotic to unload them but striking an iceberg at full steam could still flood the ship and bring her down very fast and it seems quite likely that there would have been casualties. With this, the survivors of both wrecks must also wait many hours longer in the frigid conditions for rescue, which will likely come the by the next morning from the Mount Temple (about 50 miles away), the German liner Frankfurt, which was also on its way and of course, the Californian when the crew learns what has happened.
 
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I think the easiest way to make it worse would be some sort of wireless failure. Titanic would send no distress signal, and no one would know when or where it foundered. There might be some estimates once lifeboats and debris are found, but the parameters will be much wider than they were.
 
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