Real Engineering: The Questionable Engineering of Oceangate - an in depth analysis of the Oceangate disaster by an expert in composite materials engineering
"This is profiteering, not innovation."
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My "favorite" part was when he read from the (now deleted) Oceangate blog post that effectively said "we don't bother with the mechanical certification process, since very few of the failures that occur in the world are due to mechanical faults".
Really? Could that be because the mechanical certification process actually works?
“We don’t need regulations! Theres never a failure in regulated engineering!”
I feel the need to step in here. Certification != regulation. Regulation means there is a body that can enforce the requirements with monetary or other damaging repercussions. What Oceangate faced were certifications and their decision to side-step them were met with no repercussions except their reputation with those who wouldn't ever want to step inside their sub anyways.
Point is - regulations would have prevented this, but there are none.
I get you’re point, absolutely. I didn’t mean to conflate them as the same thing.
However, at least what I thought - regulations would require certification before use (ie aeroplanes are regulated, and require certification)
In Oceangates specific case, they sidestepped regulations requiring certification by diving only in international waters? Their boat which took the sub out there would have been certified because of regulations?
That’s how I understand it
You're both right, but I'm pretty sure that you're having two separate but related discussions.
Certification by itself does absolutely nothing. It's a piece of paper.
However, it's a piece of paper that you can not get unless you've done a bunch of other stuff.
Regulations would have prevented this, because they would have required the certifications, which would have required the other stuff.
In this case, they didn't do the other stuff.
They didn't test the hull to see if it could take the pressure.
They explicitly decided not to bother testing the hull to see if it could actually take the pressure.
They certainly didn't do any fatigue testing to see how repeated pressure cycles impacted the material. The material that is extremely complex, and which nobody has done this with.
Because they didn't do that testing, they had no way to reliably know if other steps were required, like only using it X number of times, or establishing processes to do specific inspections to look for whatever kinds of damage might happen as a result of repeated stress.
So yes, if they had actually followed the process, this wouldn't have happened. They explicitly arranged to use the vessel in locations where they could not be held to the process.
But they didn't want to follow the process. Which means more than 'they didn't do the certification', it means that they also didn't do many of the other things that would have been required to get that certification.
And the lack of regulation meant that nobody could shut them down for those decisions.
Also? Just a side note, it’s very likely that people who were willing to cut corners around safety certifications… also probably didn’t have a proper maintenance schedule going on it.
Yeah well put. It should be said that regulations OFTEN cite certifications from non-regulatory bodies. Regulators are often legislators and executors, not scientists that understand the rationales behind good practice. Certification bodies (like UL, as one example, or SAE for automotive) have the scientists to do the requirements.
