It was on June 18, 2023 when the implosion of the Titanthe company’s submersible OceanGate.
The accident occurred in the depths of the North Atlantic and It meant the death of five people.
Their objective was to get closer to the remains of the Titanic.
Almost a year after the tragic episode, new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) presented findings on the factors that would have influenced the implosion to occur.
Why the OceanGate Titan imploded
The work, carried out by specialists from the University of Houston, suggests that Microscopic imperfections in the hull of the submersible could have contributed to the accident..
The head of the investigation and academic of civil and environmental engineering, Roberto Ballarini, stated in statements recovered by 20 Minutes that The previous trips that the submarine made led to the material in the aforementioned area accumulating damage.
As he explained, “the one used for the Titan’s hull It was a carbon fiber composite.”.
“It is well known that under compression loads, the fibers of such composites are susceptible to microbuckling and that they can delaminate from the matrix that surrounds them”Ballarini added.
That roughing, in the words of the expert, would have contributed to “significantly decreasing its rigidity and resistance”.
Said point, “together with the inevitable geometric imperfections introduced during its manufacturing” and the extreme conditions of the trip, would have led to the implosion of the Titanaccording to the investigation.
