The famous Titanic Submarine got crushed due to pressur, how comes the Titanic itself is (more or less) still in one piece?
In: Physics
The submarine was a pressure vessel – the inside was kept at a low pressure so that humans could survive in there, while the outside was feeling the massive pressure of the deep ocean pushing in. Very little pressure inside, lots of pressure outside, means that if the materials weren’t strong enough, they’d crumple in and get crushed.
The Titanic, since it wasn’t made to go underwater, was open – water got inside of it, causing it to sink. So as it went down, the pressure inside and the pressure outside stayed the same. Lots of water pushing in from the outside, but also lots of water pushing out from the inside. Which means no net pressure on the steel of the hull.
When the ship was sinking, if there were any watertight compartments inside, they would have crumpled as they went down, just like a submarine. But the ship itself was never watertight, so it wasn’t subject to those forces.
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