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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

Vixen said:
Look. It could well be the Estonian crew were crap, the Captain was going too fast, the visor fell off due to weakened locks and lugs AND the hull was damaged/perforated when it hit bottom. All of these can be true but yet doesn't PROVE it was the 18 m/s wind, waves or speed that caused the disaster. After all, the supposed damaged Atlantic lock was thrown back into the sea unexamined and nor were the lugs recovered. So all we have is a hypothetical situation of what COULD have happened which is not the same as DID happen. Without identifying the captain and his movement before, during and after the catastrophe, how is it possible to come to any conclusion? Especially when divers reported seeing the captain with bullet wounds to the head.
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The captain's movements were unimportant because the captain was neither massive enough (if he was above the water surface) nor buoyant enough (if he was below the water surface) that his position within the ship would have measurably affected whether or not the ship would turn turtle once it capsized.
 
Myriad said:
The captain's movements were unimportant because the captain was neither massive enough (if he was above the water surface) nor buoyant enough (if he was below the water surface) that his position within the ship would have measurably affected whether or not the ship would turn turtle once it capsized.
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You can't just assume the captain did nothing though. They had already banned the manually activated type by then. He would have been an automatically activated model. Although sadly for him, seemingly not a float free version.
 
Vixen said:
...show its GOM and GZ calculations...
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Anders Björkman didn't show any calculations either. He just guessed at a bunch of scalar quantities and declared the outcome to be what he wanted without solving a single equation. Now your attempt to repair Björkman's reputation seems to be claiming JAIC is wrong because they didn't duplicate Björkman's error by performing calculations in a model that has been rendered inapplicable by flooding. Björkman's error is not just a trivial oopsie or a typo. He's either woefully incompetent or deliberately lying. And before you try to slap another cheerful coat of paint on his nonsense, keep in mind that I have debated him directly over this and you have not. I know which of JAIC and Björkman has the better technical argument.

And while we're at it, there's no such thing as GOM, or as Björkman scribbles it, GoM. The notation for metacentric height is always GM. It's GM everywhere, all the time, in every language. It's not an acronym for a phrase. It's the line segment GM in the roll stability geometry diagram. G is the symbol for center of gravity, a point. M is the symbol for the roll metacenter, a point. GM is the notation for the length of the line segment GM, the distance between points G and M.

That's not some highfalutin engineering formalism, nor is Björkman's error a simple typo. That's basic Euclidean geometry, the kind we all learned in elementary school. Now maybe Björkman's mind had gone a little soft from sitting in an office and answering insurance questions for 25 years. But if one is proposing to school the maritime shipping industry on its supposed mistakes, maybe one should review one's notes from sixth grade to get the math right.
 
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Vixen said:
Well, the latest investigation - which the Swedish prosecutors have said is 'closed' and they are not investigating further - claims the breach in the hull was due to the vessel hitting a 'rocky outcrop' as it sank. OK, so there is a rocky ridge nearby (but then the whole area consists of granite boulders, a remnant from the Ice Age) but here's the thing: these rocks are not sharp and jagged as the average person not familiar with the Finnish archipelago terrain imagines they are (and even further inland) they are as smooth and round as a baby's bottom. In summer you can walk barefoot over them without fear of jagged edges. So yeah, let's see if Evertsson is the scoundrel that you make him out to be. So let's see if the forthcoming report can convince sceptics the massive holes in the hull were due to abnormal pointy rocks jabbing through, bearing in mind the resistance from falling into a body of water.
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The stupid is off the charts here.

1. The MS Estonia weighed 15,598GT. It was designed to float, and the hull and superstructure were (like all surface vessels) designed to that end. The ship sank in rough seas, and landed on her side. While the hull is designed to take physical abuse to varying degrees, the superstructure is not. I don't care ho smooth the rocks are, they will punch through the much thinner metal siding (as they did).

2. The ship hit the bottom and settled. Meaning it rolled and adjusted itself into those rocks creating a grinding effect.

3. The ship has continued to roll in the decades since the sinking due to a largely unstable mud shelf it sits on, and currents in that area enhanced by benthic topography. The result is the ship grinding more into those rocks.

4. I've never been to Europe but I assume 15,598GT is heavy there too.

5. Rocks don't have to be pointy to dent thin metal. The 15,598GT , gravity, and currents do all the work. In fact, speaking as a marine geology major, the rocks just lay there. The rocks in Yosemite are smooth too, yet people find ways to die on them every year. I think this analogy is why you gravitate toward Bjorkman, he has issues grasping basic facts too.

6. I posted the university study on the wreck which the final report will be based upon (hint: if you read the study you'll know what the report will say). On pages #70 through #77 they detail the hull damage in relation to the rocky outcrops. And yes, the breaches are from impact, not explosives. https://assets.ctfassets.net/3lp10f...6aa3804/SU_-_Estonia_v2.2_view_compressed.pdf
 
catsmate said:
IIRR, and it's been a while, don't the SOLAS regs specify an immersion suit should be able to be donned in two minutes or less?
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Yes

General requirements for immersion suits

(a) The immersion suit shall be constructed with waterproof materials such that:

(i) it can be unpacked and donned without assistance within 2 min taking into account any associated clothing, and a lifejacket if the immersion suit is to be worn in conjunction with a lifejacket;

From

 
Vixen said:
Let's try again as the previous diagrams seem to have gone over your head. This is a picture of what the JAIC said the Estonia did. What do you notice?

View attachment 66091

Why did it not do what the M/V Jan Heweliusz did, which was a vessel in which repairs had been made with CONCRETE.

View attachment 66092


Penny dropped?
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I notice the MS Estonia laying on her side i rougher sea conditions represented in the animation. I notice that the sea water now has access to multiple ventilation shafts that are normally well above water, and that water is filling the ship via open stairways. Not depicted is the undulation of the ship causing water slosh around inside allowing for more water to enter further into the interior.

In that second picture I notice that that vessel doesn't have a bow visor, and is smaller than Estonia, and I assume it still sank anyway.

What to I get?
 
Andy_Ross said:
Yes

General requirements for immersion suits

(a) The immersion suit shall be constructed with waterproof materials such that:

(i) it can be unpacked and donned without assistance within 2 min taking into account any associated clothing, and a lifejacket if the immersion suit is to be worn in conjunction with a lifejacket;

From

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Thank you. It's been twenty years.
 
Axxman300 said:
The stupid is off the charts here.
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Indeed. Vixen continues to pretend she's an engineer. Statements such as :—
Vixen said:
[H]ere's the thing: these rocks are not sharp and jagged as the average person not familiar with the Finnish archipelago terrain imagines they are...
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...are not just "curiosity" or "interest." They're intended to challenge the conclusions of her betters. How steel structures behave when they hit rocks is an engineering question. You don't need to have an engineering license in order to know how to work the problem. But you do have to know how to work the problem. The tacit premise that only pointy rocks can make holes in ships is just yet another, "Because I say so," coupled with the omnipresent premise, "...and I know what I'm talking about."

Vixen said:
...bearing in mind the resistance from falling into a body of water.
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Anyone else remember her hilarious attempt to AI her way through a solution to the question of hydrodynamic drag?

Vixen said:
In summer you can walk barefoot over them without fear of jagged edges.
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Let's see if our resident triple-niner can work out the difference between contours that are evident at the pedestrian scale and contours evident at ship scale.

Vixen said:
So let's see if the forthcoming report can convince sceptics...
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You can see how she's already arranging the mental furniture to reject the new findings.
 
JayUtah said:
Anyone else remember her hilarious attempt to AI her way through a solution to the question of hydrodynamic drag?
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Didn't it just forget that the ship was a thing half way through and continued on without reckoning the actual thing that was meant to be experiencing the hydrodynamic drag?

JayUtah said:
You can see how she's already arranging the mental furniture to reject the new findings.
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Deckchairs and Titanic come to mind.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
What, that this thread's been running? Funny, it feels longer. Much, much longer....
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old-boomer.gif
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Didn't it just forget that the ship was a thing half way through and continued on without reckoning the actual thing that was meant to be experiencing the hydrodynamic drag?
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IIRC it wasn't even that complicated an error. I think it calculated the water pressure at that depth, but it was a while ago and I could be misremembering.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Didn't it just forget that the ship was a thing half way through and continued on without reckoning the actual thing that was meant to be experiencing the hydrodynamic drag?
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She confused the AI by apparently asking about the "pressure" of water on a ship sinking to a given depth, and it gave her the formula for the hydrostatic pressure of seawater at that depth—a correct answer to a completely unrelated question. She was sure she had slam-dunked the people questioning her on that particular claim. Here it's clear that the, "...and I know what I'm talking about," premise is not at all true.

MarkCorrigan said:
Deckchairs and Titanic come to mind.
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Ironic, since RMS Titanic's shell plating (~38 mm) fractured simply from the stress of hitting mud. For comparison, shell plating above the waterline on the side of a ferry would be mild steel on the order of 15 mm. So that's a yield strength (the point where bending occurs) roughly in the 200s (N⋅mm-2) and an ultimate tensile strength (where it fractures) in the 400s—working the numbers in my head while eating a sandwich. Keep in mind that shell plating on ships gets bent by operational-level wave action alone. That tells you how little it takes to get to ~200 N⋅mm-2. Keep in mind it's okay if shell plating bends like that. That's not an indication of design error. Ductility is preferred over hardness. Most lay people have a completely unrealistic idea of how steel behaves at scale.
 
JayUtah said:
She confused the AI by apparently asking about the "pressure" of water on a ship sinking to a given depth, and it gave her the formula for the hydrostatic pressure of seawater at that depth—a correct answer to a completely unrelated question. She was sure she had slam-dunked the people questioning her on that particular claim. Here it's clear that the, "...and I know what I'm talking about," premise is not at all true.


Ironic, since RMS Titanic's shell plating (~38 mm) fractured simply from the stress of hitting mud. For comparison, shell plating above the waterline on the side of a ferry would be mild steel on the order of 15 mm. So that's a yield strength (the point where bending occurs) roughly in the 200s (N⋅mm-2) and an ultimate tensile strength (where it fractures) in the 400s—working the numbers in my head while eating a sandwich. Keep in mind that shell plating on ships gets bent by operational-level wave action alone. That tells you how little it takes to get to ~200 N⋅mm-2. Keep in mind it's okay if shell plating bends like that. That's not an indication of design error. Ductility is preferred over hardness. Most lay people have a completely unrealistic idea of how steel behaves at scale.
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Many years ago I worked for a company that replaced the steel decks of RORO ferries, en steel decks are basically a consumable on those ships! They were using a process that added a second skin of steel over the original with a resin layer sandwiched between them making a much more durable surface. They were also working on applications for using the same combination of materials on the Hull to strengthen, insulate and self seal small punctures (particularly bullet holes). NB: I wasn't on the engineering side, I was the cost accountant.
 
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