

Titanic: Engineering Facts [video] - engineerguy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHmgF4ibmuk

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dmlorenzetti
Surprisingly not mentioned in the video is that the failure mode of the
Olympic's hull, when the Hawke collided with it, provide clues to the reason
the Titanic sank so quickly. The heads of the rivets holding Olympic's hull
plates popped off (metallurgical analysis showed too much slag in the rivets,
making them brittle). Recall that Olympic and Titanic were under construction
at the same time, in the same shipyard. Most likely when Titanic hit the
iceburg, the rivets holding her hull plates also popped loose, creating much
larger gaps in the hull than would have occurred simply from a "puncture".

[http://www.nist.gov/mml/msed/titanic_021798.cfm](http://www.nist.gov/mml/msed/titanic_021798.cfm)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Foecke#Work](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Foecke#Work)
[http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/newsforyou/pdfs/newsf...](http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/newsforyou/pdfs/newsforyou094-download.pdf)

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Animats
Not just in the rivets, in the plates themselves.

 _The ductile-brittle transition temperature determined at an impact energy of
20 joules is -27°C for ASTM A36, 32°C for the longitudinal specimens made from
the Titanic hull plate, and 56°C for the transverse specimens. It is apparent
that the steel used for the hull was not suited for service at low
temperatures. The seawater temperature at the time of the collision was -2°C._
[1]

Ductile-brittle transition wasn't understood at all in 1912. Mass production
of steel only goes back to 1886 or so. Before that, good steel was an exotic,
expensive material, like titanium is today. The first scientific work on
ductile-brittle transition is from the 1920s, years after the Titanic. The
Charpy test for brittleness was developed in 1900, but this was before
refrigeration, so running a Charpy test on chilled metal was tough unless you
were in an very cold climate. One early metallurgist spent a year in a very
cold climate to do just such research.

[1]
[http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9801/felkins-9801.html](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9801/felkins-9801.html)

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spking
This was a very enjoyable and well-produced short video.

Just yesterday I spent 2 hours at the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor in Las
Vegas. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing the "Big Piece" up close
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuxQ9jV_N8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuxQ9jV_N8k)).
It is both deeply fascinating and profoundly sad to stand just inches from it.

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JshWright
Have you watched any of Bill's other videos? His early stuff is full of a lot
of corny humor, but really excellent explanations of cool engineering found
all around us.

The last few videos have been much higher in production value, and go into
much more depth on really fascinating topics.

