CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF

THE RAPID SINKING

OF THE TITANIC
- Gauri Sharma 2016uar1062
- Satyam Kumawat 2016uar1144
- Shruthi Andru 2016uar1717
OUTLINE
I. INTRODUCTION
II. MATERIAL USED IN MANUFACTURING
III. FAILURE OF HULLS AND RIVETS DESIGN FLAWS
IV. DESIGN FLAWS
V. COMPOSITIONS OF MATERIAL
VI. CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
On April 14, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic
collided with a massive iceberg and sank
in less than three hours. At the time, more
than 2200 passengers and crew were
aboard the Titanic for her maiden voyage
to the United States. Only 705 survived.
According to the builders of the Titanic,
even in the worst possible accident at sea,
the ship should have stayed afloat for two
to three days. This presentation discusses
the material failures and design flaws that
contributed to the rapid sinking of the
Titanic. In addition, the presentation
addresses the changes that have been
made in both the design of ships and the
safety regulations governing ships at sea
as a result of the Titanic disaster.
MATERIAL USED IN MANUFACTURING
Titanic was constructed of
•“Thousands of one inch-thick mild steel plates”
•“Two million steel and wrought iron rivets and equipped with the latest technology”.
•It was made up of low grade metals that were more brittle.
•Titanic's hull was triple riveted with using mild steel rivets, and double riveted using wrought iron, in the
central length of the ship where maximum stress was assumed to be located .
•Where as the use of wrought iron and mild steel rivets instead of steel rivets caused the titanic disaster
to take place .
•The steel rivets have good strength as compared to wrought iron.
•Titanic had experienced a great forceful impact which caused the six compartments of it to be opened
to sea where the used wrought iron rivets failed.
COMPOSITION OF HULL STEEL
NICKEL
•As the properties of nickel say that when added to steel increases its toughness even at low
temperatures .
•As nickel was missing in the materials being used in the manufacturing of Titanic , due to low
temperature in the surroundings the materials failed .
•And hence the use of Nickel would had made the ship to float for longer period.

STEEL
•After doing a series of impact tests based on their steel sample, the team was able to determine that the
steel used to build the ship was much more inferior to modern steel.
•About 10 times more brittle in fact compared to the steel used to make today’s ships.
•Test results showed high concentrations of sulfur, oxygen, and phosphorous, and low concentrations of
manganese, nitrogen and silicon.
•Pieces of steel from the hull have also appeared almost shattered, with no evidence of bending or
deformation.
DESIGN FLAWS
Along with the material failures, poor design of the watertight compartments in the Titanic's lower section
was a factor in the disaster.

The lower section of the Titanic was divided into sixteen major watertight compartments that could easily
be sealed off if part of the hull was punctured and leaking water.

After the collision with the iceberg, the hull portion of six of these sixteen compartments was damaged.

Sealing off the compartments was completed immediately after the damage was realized, but as the
bow of the ship began to pitch forward from the weight of the water in that area of the ship, the water in
some of the compartments began to spill over into adjacent compartments.
Although the compartments were
called watertight, they were
actually only watertight
horizontally; their tops were open
and the walls extended only a few
feet above the waterline.
If the transverse bulkheads (the
walls of the watertight
compartments that are positioned
across the width of the ship) had
been a few feet taller, the water
would have been better contained
within the damaged compartments.
Consequently, the sinking would have been slowed, possibly allowing enough time for nearby ships to
help.

However, because of the extensive flooding of the bow compartments and the subsequent flooding of
the entire ship, the Titanic was gradually pulled below the waterline.

The watertight compartments were useless to countering the damage done by the collision with the
iceberg.

Some of the scientists studying the disaster have even concluded that the watertight compartments
contributed to the disaster by keeping the flood waters in the bow of the ship.

If there had been no compartments at all, the incoming water would have spread out, and the Titanic
would have remained horizontal.

Eventually, the ship would have sunk, but she would have remained afloat for another six hours before
foundering [Gannon, 1995]. This amount of time would have been sufficient for nearby ships to reach
the Titanic's location so all of her passengers and crew could have been saved.
 Material Failures

A type of catastrophic failure in structural materials, brittle fracture occurs

without prior plastic deformation and at extremely high speeds.

ANALYSIS OF THE The causes of brittle fracture include low temperature, high impact loading, and
high sulphur content.

FRACTURE BEHAVIOR Effect of the Chemistry of the Steel

OF THE HULL STEEL The sulfur and phosporous level measured in the Titanic hull steel is higher than
that acceptable in modern steels,

The steel was also found to be low in Mn. This can lead to sulfur embrittlement
if there is insufficient Mn to tie up all the sulfur in MnS particles.

Effect of the Steel Microstructure

A finer microstructure, in terms of grain size and in pearlite lamella spacing,

would have exhibited a significantly higher transition temperature at this
composition. This could have been obtained by rolling the steel at a higher
speed and temperature, Charpy’s test should have been performed
Charpy test determines the amount of energy
absorbed by a material during fracture.
A piece of modern high-quality steel was tested
along with the coupon from the hull steel Both
coupons were placed in a bath of alcohol at -
1°C to simulate the conditions on the night of the
Titanic disaster .
Charpy test is run by holding the coupon against
a steel backing and striking the coupon with a
67 pound pendulum on a 2.5-foot-long arm.
When a pendulum struck the modern steel, on
the left, with a large force, the sample bent
without breaking into pieces; it was ductile.
Under the same impact loading, the Titanic steel,
on the right, was extremely brittle; it broke in
two pieces with little deformation.
 Effect of Microstructure
The Titanic was assembled using some 3,000,000
hydraulically-driven rivets . These were drawn from wrought
iron, a mass of iron and iron silicate that extruded into a
layered structure. These were driven through the hull plate and
ANALYSIS OF the stringer, and flattened on the inside.

THE FRACTURE Rivets were considered to be acceptably driven if when

tapped with a hammer, one heard a clean ‘ring’. If the sound
BEHAVIOR OF was a dull ‘thud’, the rivet was drilled out and another driven
in.
RIVETS
Upon impact, these rivets might have a tendency to pop out of their holes after
losing the interior head.
This is evidenced by both the rivets in possession, which are missing interior
heads, Loss of rivets, and the resultant parting of seams and water leakage, is
believed to be the main occurrence that caused the sinking of the Titanic.
The two hull rivets in possession have been sectioned and examined. Both
exhibit the distribution of slag stringers within the rivet, an increased amount of
incorporated slag, and are both missing the inner head.
These metallurgical factors would have degraded the mechanical performance
of the rive
Cracks at Rivet Holes:
The rivet holes in the hull plates of the Titanic, and of all contemporary ships, were
cold-punched using a steam-driven ram .
Upon close examination, these rivet holes were found to contain a small number of
cracks. However, the shipbuilders generally did not worry about them because they
were so small, and they thought that a well-driven rivet would exert a clamping stress
that would negate any risk .
However, the residual stresses from the punching process would have been
significant, and was such that they exerted a driving force on the cracks.
Furthermore, upon impact of the plate at low temperatures, these cracks could have
grown in a brittle manner and linked up, resulting in failure of the plate.
Effect of Residual Stresses
A properly driven rivet possesses a considerable amount of residual tensile stress.
This develops as the rivet cools and shrinks, clamping the two plates together, and is
only partially relieved by plastic deformation in the rivet.
This stress could have an effect on the behavior of the rivets during an impact of the
hull plate.
The residual stress does not have an effect on the tensile strength of the material.
However, it does have an effect on the amount of plate deflection would be required
to fail the rivet during an impact.
High residual stresses would increase the tendency of rivets to “pop” during collisions.
The presence of high residual stresses in Titanic rivets can be seen in a badly-
corroded bulkhead rivet. The head of the rivet has exfoliated and the slag stringers
have spread, driven by residual stress during stress corrosion cracking and dissolution
of the ferrite.
VESSEL PARTICULARS
• LOA: 882 ft. 9 in • Builder: Harland and Wolff, Belfast, Ireland
• Breadth: 92 ft. 6 in • Year Built: 1912
• Depth: 64 ft. 3 in • Flag: United Kingdom
• Draft: 34 ft 7 in • Registered Owner: White Star Line
• Gross Tonnage: 46,328 GT • Vessel Type: Passenger Liner
• Displacement: 52,310 LT • Hull Material: Riveted Steel
• Passengers & Crew: 3,547
• Design Speed: 21 knots
WATER-TIGHT BULK-HEADS
• These type of bulkheads are used nowadays in all most all types of ships.
• They provide maximum safety in times of flooding or damage of hull.
• They divide the ship into watertight compartments which prevents seeping of
water to other parts of the ship incase the hull is broken.
• The number of compartments that a particular ship has depends on the type
and requirement of the vessel.
DESIGN
•Correct height of the water tight compartments.
•One of Titanic's greatest innovations was the
placement of fifteen watertight bulkheads (with
electrically operated watertight doors) that
extended from the ship's double bottom through
four or five of her nine decks and were said to
make the ship "unsinkable."
DESIGN
•Correct height of the water tight compartments.
•One of Titanic's greatest innovations was the
placement of fifteen watertight bulkheads (with
electrically operated watertight doors) that
extended from the ship's double bottom through
four or five of her nine decks and were said to
make the ship "unsinkable."
TIMELINE OF THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC
11:35 p.m. Lookouts spot the iceberg 1/4 mile ahead.
11:40 The Titanic sideswipes the iceberg, damaging nearly 300 feet of the hull.
Midnight Watertight compartments are filling; water begins to spill over the tops of the transverse bulkheads.
1:20 a.m. The bow pitches; water floods through anchor-chain holes.
2:00 The bow continues to submerge; propellers lift out of the water.
2:10 The Titanic tilts 45 degrees or more; the upper structure steel disintegrates.
2:12 The stern raises up out of the water; the bow, filling with water, grows heavier.
2:18 Weighing 16,000 tons, the bow rips loose; the stern rises to almost vertical.
2:20 The stern slips beneath the surface.
2:29 Coasting at about 13 mph, the bow strikes the ocean floor.
2:56 Falling at about 4 mph, the stern strikes the ocean floor.
 SHIP DESIGN
• Following the Titanic disaster, the White Star Line modified the design of the Titanic's sister ships in two ways:
o The double bottoms were extended up the sides of the hull.
o The transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised.

• The double bottom on ships is constructed by taking two layers of steel that span the length of the ship and separating them by
five feet of space.
•
The ends of the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised to prevent a tragedy similar to the Titanic. As a
result, flooding of the damaged compartments could be controlled and isolated to only the damaged sections.
•
The watertight compartments, which improve a ship's ability to withstand the effects of underwater damage, are used to control
flooding in the hull of the ship.

• To maintain a nearly level position, the walls of the watertight compartments are to be oriented horizontally, or across the width
of the ship, rather than vertically.

• If one side of the hull is damaged, the water that fills the hull will even out across the width of the ship. With vertical walls, the
water in the hull would remain on the damaged side of the ship, causing the ship to lean to that side.

• The length of the watertight compartments is determined by the length of the ship. Shorter ships should have shorter compartments
while longer ships should have longer compartments.
 CONCLUSION
• The failure of the hull steel resulted from brittle fractures caused by the high sulphur content of the steel, the low
temperature water on the night of the disaster, and the high impact loading of the collision with the iceberg.

• When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the hull plates split open and continued cracking as the water flooded the ship.

• Low water temperatures and high impact loading also caused the brittle failure of the rivets used to fasten the hull
plates to the ship's main structure.

• On impact, the rivets were either sheared off or the heads popped off because of excessive loading, which
opened up riveted seams.

• Also, the rivets around the perimeter of the plates elongated due to the stresses applied by the water, which broke
the caulking and provided another inlet for the water.
•
The rapid sinking of the Titanic was worsened by the poor design of the transverse bulkheads of the watertight
compartments. As water flooded the damaged compartments of the hull, the ship began to pitch forward, and
water in the damaged compartments was able to spill over into adjacent compartments.
 CONCLUSION
• Double-sided hulls were added to ships to prevent minor hull punctures from causing major damage.

• The transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised so that water could not spill over the tops if
the ship were pitched at a slight angle.

• Safety regulations established after the sinking include the mandatory use of the wireless for large ships, the
minimum lifeboat capacity equal to the number of passengers and crew aboard, and the implementation of the ice
patrol to warn ships of nearby ice fields.

• Understanding the causes for the rapid sinking of the Titanic is necessary to prevent similar accidents in the future.
The changes made in ship design and safety regulations following the disaster were effective in decreasing the
casualties of accidents at sea. Examples include the successful rescues of 1600 passengers and crew from the
Andrea Doria in 1956, 700 passengers from the Prinsendam in 1980, and all the passengers and crew from
Mikhail Lermentov in 1986 and the Oceanos in 1992 [Garzke and others, 1994]. Other lessons need to be
learned, however. Just because shipbuilding companies have the technology to build something does not mean that
they should. In the case of the Titanic disaster, the causes for the sinking indicate that shipbuilding technology was
far more advanced than the understanding which engineers had of the materials they were using to build the ships.