Containership in high seas
Great video of the under-deck of a containership in 25 foot seas. The video is sped up by 16X to show the motion.
From the article at
gCaptain:
Watch: Containership�s Structure Visually Flexing in Heavy Seas
The above video shows the elastic flexing of the containership MOL Excellence underway.
As the MOL Comfort disaster clearly showed, there is a point at which the load on a ship�s structure exceeds the breaking strength.
One might say the vessel was brought �beyond the environment� or perhaps �outside the environment�� but those would be an incorrect assessments.
The steel structure of a vessel is made up of a complex arrangement of transverse (sideways) and longitudinal (lengthwise) plates and beams with precisely measured cross sections that contribute to the overall �section modulus� of the vessel, a measure of the overall bending strength of a given structure. In the case of the MOL Comfort, the vessel fractured in a transverse fashion because the stress on the structure of the vessel eventually exceeded the fracture point of the sum of the individual steel components.
Fascinating. Skyscrapers are built this way too -- if they were completely rigid, they would snap in the mildest of winds.
Posted by DaveH at November 2, 2013 11:16 AM