Introduction of Titanic Design Flaws and Failure

        In April 14, 1912, Titanic the biggest ship of that time crash with a huge iceberg and in less than 3 hours this big floating giant sank. At the instance, there were about 22 hundred crews along with passengers on Titanic for reaching her destination, the United States. From all people, only seven-hundred and a five had survived. Titanic’s builders told that even if the shit had a massive accident, it would have been able to stay on the surface of ocean for 2-3 days. In this paper, the design flaws and material failures have been discussed which play a major role in the ship’s quick sinking. Additionally, the modifications in both the safety regulations and design have been addressed in the article (Korte, 2012).

Facts and concept of event

        When Titanic was being built, she was the largest ship to be ever created. The ship weighed 46,000,000 kilograms, high about 25 stories, and long about 230m. The design featuring turn-of-the-century and technology involved watertight compartments to almost sixteen numbers in the ship’s lower section which could be sealed easily in case of damage such as a punctured hull and that is what made her unsinkable. On April 14^th’s night, many warnings concerning the ice had been received by wireless operators. However, the ship continued to travel in the midst of darkness towards her destination while nothing was visible. Sadly, when a huge iceberg was spotted by the lookouts, it was less than a mile’s quarter away from the ship’s front which made the crash inevitable.

    Indeed, it is really hard to evade a car rushing at the person only a blink away from the collision. It is understandable that that Titanic was unable to avoid the collision as it was heavier to almost 20,000 times and the full momentum was actually pushing it towards the iceberg. Even though the engines were triggered to push back and take the ship away from the iceberg but such a feat was deemed impossible due to both the heavy weight and the short distance. Slowing at such a close distance was impossible. Since the distance was negligible in terms of Titanic’s weight, it was only able to sideswipe the iceberg and that is what damaged almost 100 meters of the ship’s right side below the waterline and above it (Harish, 2018).

    The massive side impact caused enough damage to allow water to flood into six of the sixteen major watertight compartments. As water rushed into the starboard side of the ship’s bow, the ship began to tilt down in front and slightly to the right. However, the back (or stern) of the ship had three large and heavy propellers.

Flaws in the design

    The question concerning the sinking of Titanic is not answered by only material flaws as they were not only factors that caused the ship to sink. It is quite clear that the ship’s design was not sufficiently good to deem the ship unsinkable regardless of the accident’s magnitude. The compartments regarding the watertight lower sections were not powerful enough to hold the water back. Titanic’s lower section was actually separated into 16 huge compartments which were watertight that could be simply sealed in such a way that water would not be able to come inside. Actually, designers produced the compartments which were only horizontally watertight.

        Titanic’s compartments were open from the top and the walls reached only a shorter area over the waterline. For containing the water in the compartments which were damaged, it was specifically imperative that their watertight compartments’ walls were positioned over the ship’s width. They should have been a little taller in terms of feet. Sure, this is not the reason why Titanic was unable to stay afloat but without such a design, the ship would have been able to stay on the surface and provide enough time for near ships to come for rescue (Harish, 2018).

    Due to the collision, Titanic’s hull portion of all compartments was damaged and due to it, the sealing of all compartments took place. But with the filling of water, the weight of ship began to increase in the frontal side and it caused the ship to inch forward and considering the horizontal nature, the water began filling the adjacent containers as well. Due to the flooding of bow compartments, the whole ship was gradually flooded and it caused Titanic to weigh down below the surface of water.

    Instead of protecting the ship from the damage due to its collision, watertight compartments actually contributed in accelerating the effects of collision and increased the magnitude of water in the ship. With the absence of compartments, the water would have actually spread out and it would have caused the ship to float over the surface. Though, Titanic would have drowned even in this case but it would have remained at the top for a longer period than it had with the presence of compartments. It has been maintained by scientists that such an amount of water should have kept the ship form drowning and would have kept the ship floating so that nearby ships could come and save the crew along with passengers. It can be said that Titanic was one of the biggest event of engineers design failure and the problems analysis of the Titanic design afterwards helps the engineers to study the causes and effects of this engineering disaster (WAXMAN, 2017).

References of Titanic Design Flaws and Failure

Harish, A. (2018, November 16). Why Did the Titanic Sink? An Engineer’s Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.simscale.com/blog/2018/01/why-did-titanic-sink-engineer/

Korte, T. (2012, September 4). Titanic Sinking Tied To Engineering, Structural Failures (DIAGRAMS). Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/titanic-sunk-new-theory_n_1412622.html

WAXMAN, O. B. (2017, January 3). Did a Fire Sink the Titanic? These 7 Other Factors Could Have Also Played a Role. Retrieved from http://time.com/4620608/titanic-fire-iceberg-theories/