The Titan ship is subjected to water pressure of about 4,200 tons/m2 at a depth of nearly 4,000 m, so any problem with the hull structure will cause the ship to be crushed.

The US Coast Guard on the afternoon of June 22 (dawn of June 23, Hanoi time) confirmed that the debris found 488 meters from the bow of the Titanic at a depth of nearly 4,000 meters was from the missing Titan submersible.

“The debris shows that a catastrophic crush occurred in the anti-pressure compartment,” said US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger. All 5 people in the cabin died.

The pressure-resistant compartment of the Titan ship is a special tubular structure, made of carbon fiber combined with titanium. OceanGate, the operator of the Titan, said this is advanced technology, making the Titan significantly lighter than other submersibles made of simple steel or titanium. In this anti-pressure compartment there are no seats, passengers must sit on a flat floor, observing everything outside through a glass window in front of the nose or screens connected to high-resolution cameras around.

Crushing is the process in which an object is destroyed when subjected to enormous external pressure pressing inwards, instead of outwards as in an explosion.

According to OceanGate’s promotion, the Titan submersible’s carbon fiber and titanium hull design allows it to withstand extreme pressure at a depth of 3,800 meters, where the Titanic’s wreck is resting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. At this depth, seawater pressure is 400 times greater than atmospheric pressure, or nearly 6,000 psi.

With this pressure, each square meter of Titan’s hull is under about 4,200 tons of pressure. For comparison, the bite force of a great white shark is nearly 2,800 tons/m2. In those conditions, any incident or defect in the ship’s hull can cause the ship’s structure to collapse and be immediately crushed into many pieces. “If the anti-pressure compartment has a problem, the ship will be compressed and explode like a small bomb. All safety systems can be destroyed in the process,” Stefan Williams, professor of cargo robotics hai from the University of Sydney, said.

Many concerns about the safety of the Titan ship have been raised before. Former director of maritime operations OceanGate David Lochridge once said that the ship’s observation window design could only withstand pressure at a depth of 1,300 m, while the ship was used to dive to a depth of nearly 4,000 m. .

The specific time the Titan ship crashed has not been determined. The search team placed underwater acoustic buoys for more than three days in this area, but did not detect any loud or violent noises that could have been emitted when the ship was crushed.

Guillermo Sohnlein, one of the founders of OceanGate, the company that operates the Titan, said the crush most likely happened four days ago, when the ship was preparing to land on the ocean floor near the Titanic’s body. According to Dr. Radolaw Kicinski of the Polish Navy, the crushing phenomenon occurred almost instantaneously, lasting just a few milliseconds (milliseconds), almost similar to the case of the submarine USS Thresher in 1961. .

In an accident more than 6 decades ago, the steel hull of the submarine USS Thresher “crumbled like toffee” under the extreme pressure of sea water. The tragedy happened in 1/20 of a second (50 milliseconds), too fast for the crew to realize what was happening.

“I know this cannot ease the pain of the families of the victims on the Titan submersible, but the reality is that 5 people on board died immediately when the crushing phenomenon occurred, they did not even have time to realize it. Something is wrong,” said David Pouge, a commentator from CNN.

Experts say it is necessary to recover debris from the seabed to conduct a full investigation into what happened, but this is not easy. Unmanned diving devices are continuing to collect evidence and traces on the seabed to get more information about the tragedy.