/eng/ - Engineering

>>154

Deepwater Horizon 2010

>Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rig owned by Transocean. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the rig was commissioned by R&B Falcon, which later became part of Transocean registered in Majuro, Marshall Islands, and leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013. In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 ft (10,683 m) and measured depth of 35,055 ft (10,685 m) in the Tiber Oil Field at Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Houston, in 4,132 feet (1,259 m) of water. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The resulting fire could not be extinguished and, on 22 April 2010, Deepwater Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill in U.S. waters.

There's a "Seconds From Disaster" episode on this that I haven't watched but will do soon. (embedded)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtfew6xyQ8g (Channel 5 documentary - blocked for Britfags)

It's important to note that these offshore disasters had very different causes (Well blowout vs Flammable gas leak).

The rigs are of completely different designs and are built for different purposes (Drilling vs Production)

Pretty much everyone who takes a class on vibrations will be introduced to the Tacoma Bridge disaster. Resonance is very powerful and will fuck your shit up.

Tacoma Bridge 1940

>The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. At the time of its construction (and its destruction), the bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world in terms of main span length, behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.

>From the time the deck was built, it began to move vertically in windy conditions, which led to construction workers giving the bridge the nickname Galloping Gertie. The motion was observed even when the bridge opened to the public. Several measures aimed at stopping the motion were ineffective, and the bridge's main span finally collapsed under 40-mile-per-hour (64 km/h) wind conditions the morning of November 7, 1940.

Chernobyl 1986

>The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially the Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe.

An unsafe reactor design had a runaway reaction and blew itself the fuck up, throwing its highly radioactive fuel everywhere because it did not have sufficient containment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

This episode was made before the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011. Fukushima might look like Chernobyl because you have buildings with roofs blown off but that's superficial, Fukushima had a containment vessel that largely stayed intact (bar a crack in part of the system caused by the initial earthquake)

>>157

Fukushima 2011

>The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant that began on 11 March 2011 and resulted in a nuclear meltdown of three of the plant's six nuclear reactors.

I was wary about this episode because the disaster has been so hyped from the second that it happened. I think it turned out OK and they didn't go completely OTT with sensationalism.

I think the newer episodes of "Seconds From Disaster" lack concentration on the technical details when compared to older episodes.

Challenger 1986

>The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida at 11:38 EST (16:38 UTC). Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff.

I knew about the O-ring and it's insufficient properties at low temperature but I didn't know about the strong winds (300km/h jet-stream) that happened right before the actual explosion, they got telemetry from a passenger plane that passed over the launch site 30 minutes prior. It flexed the booster rockets enough to let the leak begin.

>>159

Columbia 2003

>The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.

>During the launch of STS-107, Columbia's 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the left wing. A few previous shuttle launches had seen minor damage from foam shedding, but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. NASA managers limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed.

Union Carbide Chemical Leak

Thousands of people died

Thousands more scarred

It was, and still is, an environmental disaster

Its on of the worst Chemical Engineering Disasters.