Quote:
Originally Posted by aschen
I am still suspicious of that titanium carbon fiber Butt joint, but just speculation
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the other thing to be suspicious of the carbon itself.
its very hard to build carbon fiber without any inclusions. and carbon fiber is carbon fibers in glue, ie its many layers of glue/fiber/glue/fiber ... all those layers compress and decompress with every dive. any imperfections in that, are stress concentrators, which, are site for crack initiation and propagation. so you compress and decompress this system, and you start propagating cracks.
it sounds like the sub was designed with some kind of acoustic emission monitoring system to listen in the carbon fiber to hear these crack popping. but there is no way to tell the size, shape, location etc of the cracks, just know they are happening.
this is why the guy was fired. he was hired to do non-destructive analysis on the hull, looking for inclusions/cracking and such. he said it was a deathtrap and was promptly fired.
so i mean, that, to me, sounds like the issue.
its also worthy to note that carbon fiber is not used in submarine design commonly.