Titan/Titanic tragedy

I seem to recall a science experiment back in elementary school where we had a glass tube sealed on one end and a piston rod. A small bit of paper was placed in the end of the tube and when the piston was quickly forced in, using hand pressure, the paper ignited. It doesn't seem so far fetched that an implosion at deep sea pressure wouldn't produce a similar result, regardless of the cold. The shock wave was probably enough to crush their bones and teeth, but being porous and at lower internal pressures those probably would have also imploded as well.

Just a morbid though.
 
The temperature increase as P increases and V decreases is huge, but y'all are forgetting that the gas law is only for adiabatic processes, like what happens inside a test tube. This is not an adiabatic process because there would be massive heat exchange to the environment. It's not a fire piston, that is a thermally isolated system. We assume adiabatic conditions for everything in physics class, such as atmospheric lapse rates, piston systems, Carnot processes, so on- much of the mechanical tech we use. But in this case, 100% of the heat would be lost to the environment. The rate of thermal loss (differentiable to compression rate and the thermal capacities and conductivities of surrounding matter) will determine the temperature in an open system. The answer is in the difference of overlayed curves, kinda hard to do on the back of a napkin. Knowing the adiabatic final temp will help you quantify the energy in the system, but won't tell you if they're charcoal. As the heat moves into flesh, the bomb is losing heat to water, probably a lot faster.

It's fun to think how long it takes to vaporize a raw steak on a grill. It's slow, but it's all about proportion. A steak probably won't last milliseconds within the corona of the sun.
 
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Janderso said:
I noticed that as well. Looks to be another clue that the bonding agents did not work as planned.
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Yeah, in my relatively "uneducated opinion", I trust modern polymers to bond something like a bedside to a truck box, but I'm not so sure I'd trust my life to them in that type of extreme environment....they'd have to show me a lot of data test points, NDT results and destructive testing to get me to even chance it.

I don't doubt that the RIGHT polymer can perform in those conditions, but you're going to have to prove it beyond a doubt before i'll risk my life on it. And in an environment where the smallest imperfection means instantaneous death, I'm going to be very critical of any "proof" they provide.

30 Years flying SAR and seeing some of the "questionable" kit they try to throw at us has made me a very skeptical "engineer". I go back to my statement I've made several times to Aerospace design engineers: "just because you can do it doesn't mean you should".....
 
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The reason it's believed that the occupants may have burned instantly to ash is because of the gasses INSIDE their body. Not the gasses outside.
In a crematorium, the heat is applied from the outside and takes hours to get to the inside. Similarly to cooking a steak.

It would be interesting to do the piston tube thing with a piece of hamburger instead of paper. I don't know if they could get to 5500 PSI instantly but they could at least observe the results and extrapolate.
 
I think it's also important to distinguish medical burns from burning. To physically burn tissue you have to have all the water out of it and raise the temperature substantially. I'm gonna guess 451°F. Just boiling off all the water requires a large amount of heat energy for the phase change. That is different than getting a clinically significant burn injury. If you just raise the temperature of a cell to 180° even for a split second, you will get permanent protein denaturing and the cell will be severely injured or die. That is what happens in a medical burn. Often tissues initially look OK but die later . I'm not disputing anything that has been said. Just pointing out the distinction. Of course prolonged exposure to an intense heat source especially if they have a high specific heat will physically burn the tissues. And of course your outer most layer of skin does not have a lot of water. Also let's not forget how high the boiling point of water might be at 6000 psi. The physics are a lot different!
I find this very academically interesting. I did not even initially consider that the compression would cause temperatures to rise as discussed.
 
pontiac428 said:
This is exactly what set the tone for me as I watched the s**tshow unfold. Privilege has it's privileges.

I'm not sure how paid tourism came up when this was supposed to be an experimental thing for exploration... I'm just glad the owner/operator/proponent was on board, and no kittens were hurt.

I got ten submarines I can see from my office window, so you bet this was the hot topic of conversation this week.
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Just my thoughts, filament wound carbon fiber cylinder section of hull was a bad Idea. A steel hull cycles, shrinking an inch or so between the surface and 5600+/- PSI at 13000 ft that hull section likely suffered from de-lamination over a number of dives until it finally had a catastrophic failure. There is a reason the pressure chambers of ultra deep diving subs are a steel sphere rather than plastic hotdogs. This is likely the reason they could not get a certification with a class organization such as DNV or ABS.

My deepest condolences to the families.
 
I would not trust CF in this case no matter the test results. Need real world data. We now have 1 data point but that is not a trend.
Pierre
 
Graphite fiber epoxy composites are used extensively on satellites. They have all the right attributes - light weight, high strength, wide temperature range and low coefficient of thermal expansion. The space industry and NASA have analyzed GFECs ad nauseam. It seems that the submersible designers should have been able to access that information.
 
verbotenwhisky said:
Just my thoughts, filament wound carbon fiber cylinder section of hull was a bad Idea. A steel hull cycles, shrinking an inch or so between the surface and 5600+/- PSI at 13000 ft that hull section likely suffered from de-lamination over a number of dives until it finally had a catastrophic failure. There is a reason the pressure chambers of ultra deep diving subs are a steel sphere rather than plastic hotdogs. This is likely the reason they could not get a certification with a class organization such as DNV or ABS.

My deepest condolences to the families.
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Fast attack sub test depth is barely over 1/10th the depth to the titanic. Fella across the hall says he used to tape a piece of dental floss taut from one wall to the other of the bunkhouse before submerging, and they'd all ooh and aah at the 3" of sag the floss had at depth.
 
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