Various media outlets have pictures of the wreckage being hauled out of the water. Big pieces all crumpled.
Except for the titanium ones..
I believe I saw one or both Titanium interface caps; the Titanium 'rings' that get glued to the carbon fiber/epoxy hull and bolted to Titanium end caps (one endcap had the acrylic viewport).
What struck me was...there was
no carbon fiber hull (visible) attached to the (what I believe was one or both) Titanium interface rings?
That could potentially mean that the green-colored adhesive used to glue the carbon fiber hull to the Titanium interface rings may have become...unglued?
Adhesive not done in a vacuum?
I watched a video of some of 'Titan's' construction, I was surprised (in a shocked way) that when they appeared to mixing the green-colored adhesive–that the hand-mixing wasn't done in a vacuum– and/or they didn't show the hand-mixed adhesive put into a container to which the container is sealed and a vacuum pump is drawn, to pull out the air bubbles. The mixing likely would've/should've also been done in an This means air (bubbles) were likely mixed/whipped into the green-colored adhesive. That's bad and can lead to failure.
Air bubbles are bad because they will shrink and expand with each dive cycle. The shrinkage-and-expanding can cause carbon fiber to delaminate, crack. Cracks can propagate, akin to if you get a chip in your car windshield from a stone hitting it on the highway, and if it's below freezing, any water in the crack(s) will slowly cause the crack to get bigger and bigger. The crack will bet bigger and move across your windshield. The more water that gets in the crack(s) and freezes each time, the bigger the crack gets. So if there were to be small cracks in the carbon fiber, especially at the ends where the fibers were cut where they they'd get glued/expoxy'd/adhesived to the Titanium interface caps (I assume the carbon fiber isn't tucked back onto itself to form a rounded edge); those joins with the green-colored adhesive are prime areas for carbon fiber to fail.
Also, there were likely air bubbles in the epoxy that bound the carbon fiber together.
I don't know how the carbon fiber ends were, for if they were made from a crack-mitigating formation by having
carbon nanotubes in the way? that's way out of my knowledge base. But the idea is, those join areas can be trouble and prone to crack the carbon fiber under tremendous atmospheric pressures.
But again, my understanding is carbon fiber/epoxy made in a cylinder with adhesive joins to Titanium is a recipe for disaster at extreme depths.
Each cycle at tremendous pressure and temperature changes, with possible water intrusion, can produce delamination in the the carbon fiber, and possible failure at the adhesive joins. Carbon fiber/epoxy, and Titanium have different shrink rates across all axes, and that also produces stress and strain along the joinery.