This Netflix movie highlighted important concerns about the Titan but bypassed major technical facts. Misinformation by others promoted a fundamentally flawed documentary. An explosion ripped the Titan apart, rather than an implosion. The true story of this explosion disaster was overlooked in this documentary. I stand behind these conclusions as an expert in fluid mechanics and failure analysis. Even so, the NetFlix documentary was well produced and very informative, where the Titan was used to observe the wreckage of the Titanic.
The final report from the Marine Board of investigation was published while this Op Ed was in review, and this Op Ed was updated accordingly ("Report of the Marine Board of Investigation Into the Implosion of the Submersible Titan (CG1788361) in the North Atlantic Ocean Near the Wreck Site of the RMS Titanic Resulting in the Loss of Five Lives on June 18, 2023", click here).
Update Comment, 8/9/2025
The U.S. Coast Guard, Marine Board of Investigation refuses to respond to legitimate safety concerns and chooses to endorse incompetence in what has now become a coverup of their mistakes during the Titan explosion investigation.
Breakthrough Science for the Titan Disaster
I invented and published a brand new theory to explain explosion risks and explosion threats to submersibles. This invented and proven theory for pressure vessels and piping, based on decades of pressure-vessel and piping damage and shock-wave research, is stated as follows. The Titan sub was a 22-feet-long pressure vessel, shaped like a pipe with pipe caps (Figure 1), subjected to high pressure shock waves inside the sub.
- First, high pressures cracked and imploded the Titan window in cyclic fatigue or sheared the adhesive layer at the titanium dome in fatigue.
- Second, high-pressure reflected water hammer waves nearly doubled the external ocean pressure inside the sub.
- Third, the front dome blew off the sub due to these extraordinarily high pressures, exceeding approximately 16 million pounds.
- Fourth, the Titan hull then exploded outward at nearly twice its failure stress to shoot debris hundreds of feet through the water.
- Fifth, the expected blast load was less than 2 tons of TNT (Figure 2). The explosion magnitude was determined by assuming cavitation, or vaporization, of water in the sub as a high pressure blast wave blew the sub apart.
- Sixth, low pressures following the outward explosion wave crushed some debris back into the sub.
- Finally, the carcass of the sub sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
I stand behind these conclusions as an expert in fluid mechanics and failure analysis, where I performed an independent investigation of the Titan explosion. Although I am not an expert in submersible design, I am an expert in shock waves and their destructive interactions to destroy piping and pressure vessels. The Titan was, in fact, a pressure vessel subjected to explosive shock waves, and the Titan investigation has not pursued explosive shock waves to date.
Figure 1. Before and after photos of the Titan Sub.
(Image by Adadapted from NTSB by Leishear Engineering, LLC) Details DMCA
Figure 2. Aboveground 1-ton explosion for comparison to the underwater 2-ton Titan explosion. The Titan explosion was a cavitation pressure release explosion only without flames or detonation.
(Image by SRL Images Channel) Details DMCA
The True Cause of the Titan Disaster
Facts and proof were published in an OpEd News article ("The Titan Submersible Blew Apart in an Explosion Before Partial Crushing - A Fight Against Public Opinion"). This Op Ed proved that a flaw in the viewport or adhesive induced a small-scale implosion to blast a wall of water into the submersible compartment to kill all five occupants and explode the hull. That killer wall of water blasted into the sub at hundreds of miles per hour and thousands of pounds per square inch. One 'item recovered included an "intact" pen belonging to Rush [the OceanGate CEO], which was found inside a piece of clothing believed to be the 61-year-old's sleeve' (click here).
The final Titan report concluded the following, in part.
'Five people died when the commercial submersible TITAN imploded on June 18, 2023, in what is considered to be a preventable tragedy. The U.S. Coast Guards Marine Board of Investigation into the fatal incident found that OceanGates failure to follow established engineering protocols for safety, testing, and maintenance of their submersible, was the primary causal factor. The investigation further identified the need for proper corporate governance, a professional workplace culture, and improved regulatory oversight, in particular for novel vessel designs and operations.'
'Titans carbon fiber hull design and construction in terms of winding, curing, gluing, thickness of hull and manufacturing standards introduced flaws that weakened its original structural integrity, and those flaws likely worsened over time.'
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