Patrick Lahey, the president of Triton Submarines, told the Times that Stockton Rush had a talent for convincing people that the Titan was safe.

I have done destructive strength testing on carbon fiber. It would not shatter like porcelain. Carbon fiber is made of thin, very strong but very flexible stands of carbon embedded in more brittle resin (plastic). The resin by itself probably would shatter. Carbon fiber will snap suddenly as the resin fails, but the fibers keep it from flying apart.

With steel, it would depend very much on the alloy. Some are very ductile (will bend very far without breaking) whereas some are more brittle and actually will shatter with enough force.

This video gives a good idea of how steel would compare to carbon fiber. Carbon fiber starts at 3:57 and high speed steel (a very brittle steel) at 6:19. There is no ductile steel, but 6061aluminum at 2:48 fails pretty much the same way just with a lower force.

https://youtu.be/ifOzrOgpI4g

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Thanks for that! I’ll check it out.

Appreciate the knowledge on the various materials. I probably misinterpreted the carbon fiber thing from the video.

And looking at the inside of the sub after I posted that comment, I also noticed how much material surrounds that carbon fiber (I don’t know if that’s the composite or some kind of insulation).

Semi-related, they also had the monitors screwed into that on the inside, which I’m guessing would be very bad if it reached the carbon fiber interior?

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