The “maverick design” of the Titan submersible made it more susceptible to implosion, the New York Times has said.
The material used for the submersible may also have been a factor, the newspaper says.
Five people – businessman Hamish Harding, OceanGate owner Stockton Rush, Suleman Dawood with his father, Shahzada Dawood, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet – died last month during a dive in the submersible to the wreck of the Titanic.
A New York Times report quotes Tim Foecke, a retired forensic metallurgist, as stating that the change in hull geometry from a tight sphere to a lengthy tube may have contributed to Titan’s catastrophic failure.
“A spherical hull distributes the stress evenly, making it the best shape for resisting the compressive forces of the abyss,” the newspaper says.
Any other shape will “tend to deform unevenly”.
A larger hull needs to be stronger and thicker to withstand the same pressure as a smaller one, Foecke explained.
Experts who spoke to the newspaper compared Titan to Alvin, a research submersible with an all-titanium hull which has completed more than 4,500 dives since 1973.
It notes that OceanGate created most of Titan’s hull out of carbon fibre, rather than the conventional titanium used for Alvin. Experts said the risky design saved money.
Titan’s hull was larger and held two more passengers than Alvin, which fits three. In three years of dives, OceanGate charged up to 250,000 US dollars per person to visit the Titanic.
Read more in the New York Times here (subscription required).
