Best Titan Sub Implosion Simulation, Cracked Porthole? Q & A

The port hole window was only certified to 1300meters by the manufacturer. The manufacturer offered to redesign it to withstand 4000m, which would be 200m deeper than the titanic wreckage, but OceanGate didn't want to pay for that, and instead fired the employee that was making a fuss over it (Lochridge). This is a damning fact.

He coated his submersible with truck bed liner claiming “it’s what the military uses”… as a floor coating. The military doesn’t use Rhinoliner to keep water out of submarines! 🤦‍♂️

Rhino liner is sprayable liner that would be applied to truck beds. Again, we see that Titan was a pot luck of various materials. Rule of thumb, as you combine various materials you increase complexly of joints as well as adding more variables in expansion/contraction puzzle.

Every time I see this so-called sub, the hobby shop nature of the whole build gets more and more unbelievable!

As a drafting design student my money is on the glue between the titanium and carbon fiber, there’s too much movement there under each compression cycle to even remotely consider the viewport. If I was an investigator that’s the first place I’d look just because of the strength difference in material and the fact it’s a cycle fatigue hot spot

It's very strange to me when Stockton says at 6:05..."It gives a huge warning before it's going to fail." when discussing the porthole lens. He seems to think that he will be given all the time in the world to surface and re-design the craft after hearing that the portal lens is failing.

Hi Jeff - used to work on aircraft with windows made of a similar material. What you're seeing from the photo on the OceanGate website is called "crazing" and is usually a result of exposure to high heat or electricity - example, you usually find crazing near the de-icing elements built into the windshields. I don't know what effect crazing has on the ability of acrylic to withstand high pressure. Our rule was to replace the window if the crazing was more than 1/2" or it interfered with the pilot's vision. To my knowledge that wasn't so much out of concern for any breaking, but more because the crazing lines can refract light, and lights are extremely important for navigating at night or in any kind of rain or fog. Edit: just saw another comment where someone says it's optical grease to help the acrylic seal as it's pushed inward by outside forces. No reason not to believe that, makes sense. Maybe investigate crazing just to see if that would be a likely culprit?

Years ago before my retirement I used to maintain the US Navy’s nondestructive testing (NDT) systems in San Diego, California. The stresses from takeoffs, landings, and controlled flight over time fatigues the wings and fuselage; after a certain number of flights NDT is used to locate minute fractures and aided in identifying areas requiring maintenance and repair. After the OceanGate accident, one of the first things that came to mind was whether Titan was ever subjected to NDT.

What still caught my attention is how preserved the titanium parts are. It seems it was the right material to be used in the whole body of the sub.

I'm glad you talked about the Alan videos. In one of them, the sub got stuck at the bottom for many hours, and when they finally were able to ascend, they could't bring the platform afloat. Because it required compressed air, the air in those tanks exhausted, and the submarine/platform listing in the middle of Atlantic, the crew bolted inside, and a few guys circling around on dinghies with no clue what to do. You should bring that scene in your videos. To me is the summary of the OceanGate's operation, a complete mess.

Rush's constant reassurance that there would always be " warnings" is insane.

It was great to see Stockton Rush walking around the Titan on land while wearing safety glasses and a bicycle helmet.

I actually was on this submersible when I applied for a job with the company. We went out in Puget Sound only like 600-800ft deep, saw some stuff, and had some folks from the UW on with us studying the marine ecosystem. Even that short trip of 90-120 minutes gave me pause. We had an issue with the joystick connection and were without control for what seemed like forever but probably was 5-10 seconds. After hearing that this wasn't uncommon, I chose to work elsewhere. The rapper Macklemore was on it, too, for a shark week episode. This was before they began going to the titanic.

Stockton was so confident. Goes to show how terrible of a weapon something like charisma can be if used in the wrong hands

There would have definitely been some loud creaking for about 10 seconds as the acrylic began to fail. It would have resonated louder and louder in that small capsule. What a terrifying thing

I saw un unrelated documentary about military sub implosions. Basically, it all happens so fast, that when a failure occurs, it's so fast most people don't even realize it happened. ie They literally dont know what happened, and suddenly they're dead. In the atmosphere in a submarine, there's oxygen, and possibly organic compounds like carbon, and oils in the air from machinery. As well as flammable particles like dust and cotton, from skin and clothes. Trace amounts, but they become very powerful. At submarine depths, the pressure is so great, that when failure occurs, the compression is sort of like, those compression-igniters for starting a fire while camping. Like a little piston. You put a little bit of wick inside, and you move the compression actuator a few times, and the pressure builds up, and literally ignites the air inside the piston, which lights the wick, so you can light your fire. It's similar in a sub implosion for a normal nuclear submarine at THEIR operating depths, which are nowhere close to those of the titanic depths. And the implosion happens so fast, in milliseconds, that the signal from pain receptors, or even the eyes - that signal doesn't even make it to the brain before theres that compression explosion inside, and everyone is dead. Now imagine this Titan submersible, at an even greater depth, without any benefit of steel hatches, or separated compartments to slow things down. They might've heard some creaking, and cracking, and noticed their ascent was slow...but when it finally imploded, they likely didn't even realize it happened. Just one second, you're there, and then you weren't. So they more than likely felt no pain, which is a silver lining in all this.

Thank you for continuing to do these videos; I don’t feel like I have to go searching around all kinds of channels for speculation and news since you bring them all together. Thanks!!

What looks like cracking, is an optical grease that is used to seal the tapered surface of the acrylic into its seat in the titanium end cap. Under pressure, the acrylic is forced inwards and the grease helps it seal.

Jeff provides by far the most interesting and thoroughly researched content on engineering failures.

You have to also take into account that while the carbon fibre pressure vessel is being pushed inwards, that gas inside is being pressurised at the same time to many hundreds of an atmosphere... in milliseconds. The gas pressure would have killed them long before the debris. But the debris would eviscerate the bodies.