Always curious about the design of Titanic

Hi all, I'm new to the marine field, but I'm always curious about the design of the vessel, so I always like to read something about this topic in my spare time. About the Titanic, I'm not sure is there a certain analysis about its sinkage, I did some researches and some said it is because of the amount of breaking tanks is more than its capacity and some said it is because of a 45 degree heal angle. Can anyone talks about the topic? Thanks!

 

Hi Edolyi.. I think you have opened a can of worms with this post! A number of factors contributed to the huge loss of life, but one main event caused Titanic to sink,being the collision with the iceberg. Do you have specific questions or are you just interested in reading a discussion? Because there are a looot of these online!

 

If you search this forum there are a few threads on the subject which will be worth reading.
I have just watched a tv documentary which implicated the bunker fires as playing a part. There was a coal bunker fire in progress before the ship left port for the last time which eye witnesses (stokers) said caused the steelwork to glow red. This both weakened the steel when cold water rushing in hit it, and possibly distorted watertight doors preventing them from being closed. There were other factors mentioned in the doc., if I find what channel it was on (in UK) I'll post.

 

I watched this documentary as well alan - and too be honest i wasn;t impressed. All this talk of bulkheads weakening due to the heat. In the end, a 6 compartment damage is what sank Titanic...

 

Exactly, there were lots of speculates, for me the most specific question I would like to know is the designer designed the ship to remain on water for 12 hrs even if there are 5 tanks were lost. When it hit the iceberg, 5 tanks lost at first, but soon the 6th tanks lost which caused the later damage of the whole vessel. The cause of the loss of the 6th tank puzzled me the most. is a structural problem or a material problem or for the other reasons.

 

I do not think there was a structural failure, except perhaps in the last part of the sinking. Now I do not remember if the stern came off the rest of the hull or if the entire hull sank. Simply the boat was filled with water and sank. One of the problems was that the watertight bulkheads did not reach the main deck and the water passed from one compartment to another. When the buoyancy was less than the weight of the ship, it went to the bottom of the sea.

 

Hi Alan, thank you for ur advice. Please post the name of the documentary if you can find it. I'm very looking forward to watching it. Cheers

 

Hi TANSL. Is it because the cruise need to maintain its permeability so that the bulkhead is not able to reach the main deck?

 

The Great Eastern and the Titanic: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi81.htm

The short article above cites relaxing attitudes towards safety; but, I don't think that's necessarily accurate.

Instead I take a hint from this old saying: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I.K.Brunel built the Great Eastern not unlike like a dreadnought of 45 years later, sans the armor belt of course, and she stood up to a blow far mightier than Titanic. But she was uneconomical to operate.

Titanic, by contrast, took away just a scooch too much, at least in having her bulkheads extend to the deck, in her quest to be both serviceable and safe.

But where too much was really taken away, the lifeboats, was an artifact of legislative bumbling. Indeed further post-Titanic legislative bumbling can be said to have added another 844 to the death toll as the otherwise well designed Eastland, overburdened with added lifeboats not allowed for in her design, capsized at the dock.

 

No, you have some misunderstanding. The cruise has not a "permeability". Each watertight compartiment has its own permeability but if the compartimente is not watertight you can't talk about permeability.
After that "accident" it was decided that main watertight bulkheads, necessarily, should reach the main deck. Then they start talking about permeability, floodable length, and damage stability of a ship.

 

Actually I don't think they took away too much. In fact, a naval architect following the disaster concluded that the vessel could withstand more damage than she was required to have. Yes the bulkheads for example did not extend to the deck but the damage that occurred massively exceeded what Titanic was designed for.

 

Then their design assumptions concerning damage would have been inadequate.

Itself a form of taking away too much and basically agreeing with the view that the industry had become lax concerning safety (rather than having a more or less adequate sense of damage requirements but thinking you were still within what these demand though you aren't).

I would also point out another scenario: that had the Titanic had more compartments (than 15), though certainly not as many as Brunel's ship (the Great Eastern had 50 per the article I linked to IIRC), the damage received would have been survivable even without them going up to the deck.

Even with flooding from one section to the next the relative angle of sinking could be further reduced permitting the ship to stay afloat longer.

 

No I'm afraid I disagree - your logic of design assumption being inadequate is flawed. By this logic, any disaster ever, can be blamed on inadequate design. You cannot build an unsinkable ship. What you can do is build a ship which is an optimal solution to safety, economical, practical etc. Safety regulations are mainly based on probabilities and the likelihood of Titanic hitting an iceberg was extremely low

 

By one reckoning in the previous 20 years 8 ships had sunk from collisions with icebergs (larger than growler, or pack ice). That there have only been 5 since, by same account, would be more due to reporting and radio regulations that came out of the Titanic disaster.

That would be twice the number in the previous 20 before 1892.

Rare, yes, but also increasing in frequency.

 

As Vlad Putin said, when asked what really happened to the "Kursk" submarine..."it sank". I wonder what would have happened with Titanic if it hit head-on, instead of the glancing blow.