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Failure of Tiny Rivets May Have Sunk 'Unsinkable' Liner
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Titanic Metallurgy
Failure of Tiny Rivets May Have Sunk 'Unsinkable' Liner
When the remains of the RMS Titanic were discovered more than two miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in 1985, the story of the great liner once dubbed "unsinkable" by the press began moving from legend into scientific fact. Numerous research investigations have been piecing together the details of what really occurred on April 14-15, 1912, after Titanic struck an iceberg, broke in half and carried more than 1,500 people to their deaths. Now, the answer to one of the most elusive questions--Why did the 46,000-ton ship sink in less than three hours?--may be contained in a new report from NIST.
The culprit, says NIST metallurgist Timothy Foecke in the report, is very possibly one of Titanic's smallest components--the 3 million wrought iron rivets used to hold the hull sections together.
Foecke performed metallurgical and mechanical analyses on steel and rivet samples recovered from the Titanic's hull. His examinations revealed that the wrought iron in the rivets contained three times today's allowable amount of slag (the glassy residue left behind after the smelting of ore), making it less ductile and more brittle than it should have been. This finding provides strong evidence that Titanic's collision with the iceberg caused the rivet heads to break off, popped the fasteners from their holes and allowed water to rush in between the separated hull plates.
Photographs of Titanic's sister ship, the RMS Olympic, back up the rivet failure theory. Taken after the Olympic collided with another vessel in 1911, the photos clearly show dozens of vacant holes in the hull where rivets once sat. Sonar and other evidence gathered during a 1996 visit to the Titanic also point to seam and rivet failure.
For a single copy of Metallurgy of the RMS Titanic (NISTIR 6118), send a request to Public Inquiries by fax at (301) 926-1630 or by email at inquiries@nist.gov.
(Photo)
Media Contact:
Anne Enright Shepherd (301) 975-4858
Stock Study
'Baldrige Index' Outperforms S&P 500 Again
For the fourth year in a row, the fictitious "Baldrige Index" has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 by almost 3 to 1. The "Baldrige Index" is made up of publicly traded U.S. companies that have received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award during the years 1988 to 1996. NIST "invested" a hypothetical $1,000 in each of the six whole company winners of the Baldrige Award--ADAC Laboratories, Eastman Chemical Co., Federal Express Corp., Motorola Inc., Solectron Corp. and Zytec Corp. The investments were tracked from the first business day of the month following the announcement of award recipients (or the date they began public trading) to Dec. 1, 1997. Adjustments were made for stock splits. Another $1,000 was hypothetically invested in the S&P 500 at the same time. NIST found that the group of six outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 2.7 to 1, achieving a 394.5 percent return on investment compared to a 146.9 percent return for the S&P 500.
A similar hypothetical investment in a group made up of the six whole company Baldrige Award winners and the parent companies of 12 subsidiary winners outperformed the S&P 500 by 2.4 to 1, a 362.3 percent return on investment compared to a 148.3 percent return for the S&P 500.
A copy of the three-page stock study is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.quality.nist.gov/fm97stok.htm.
Media Contact:
Jan Kosko (301) 975-2767
Technology Partnerships
ATP Consortium Writes the Book on Building a Better Car
Assembling a quality car or truck is a little easier now, thanks to lessons learned in research performed jointly by U.S. automobile manufacturers, their suppliers and academic researchers. For instance, problems with clamps and weld guns are common causes of excessive variations in vehicle body dimensions. Methods for dealing with these and many other vehicle assembly issues are outlined in a recent report, The Capture and Communication of Knowledge: A Lessons Learned Approach.
The manual is published and copyrighted by the 2 mm Program, Inc., the owners of the technology and techniques developed through the research, which was co-funded by the Department of Commerce’s Advanced Technology Program. Among assembly plants using the technology, variations in vehicle body dimensions have been reduced from as much as 5 or 6 millimeters to 2 millimeters or less, resulting in significant cost savings for manufacturers and increased customer satisfaction.
The manual, part of the effort to transfer the new technology to additional users, provides a framework for the development of dimensional-control systems in the automobile industry and other industries that use similar processes.
For more information, contact the 2 mm Program, Inc., 2901 Hubbard, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48105-2467, (313) 741-5905.
Media Contact:
Michael Baum (301) 975-2763
Quality
Baldrige Winners Share Success on 1998 Nationwide Tour
The winners of the 1997 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award--3M Dental Products Division, Solectron Corp., Merrill Lynch Credit Corp., and Xerox Business Services--will be sharing their successful quality and business performance strategies this spring and summer in four U.S. cities. They are: Philadelphia (Doubletree Hotel), May 12; Chicago (Westin Chicago River North), June 3; Atlanta (Ritz-Carlton Atlanta), June 11; and San Francisco (Fairmont Hotel), June 17. Representatives from previous years' Baldrige Award winning companies also will participate in the one-day conferences.
To register for a conference or for further information, contact The Conference Board, (212) 339-0345.
Media Contact:
Jan Kosko (301) 975-2767
ATP Competition
Proposals Sought for New Learning Technologies Program
A new Advanced Technology Program focused program in Adaptive Learning Systems and the start of its first competition were announced on Feb. 2, 1998, by Commerce Secretary William M. Daley. The new program will help support high-risk research and development by industry to develop new infrastructure technologies based on information networks such as the World Wide Web.
The goal of the focused program is to ultimately put powerful tools for developing interactive instructional software in the hands of educators and other content specialists. Future "adaptive learning systems" envisioned will reduce the cost of producing and disseminating educational materials, improve instructional effectiveness and workplace productivity, and make training and learning more accessible than ever before.
The competition announcement for the ATP program in Adaptive Learning Systems appeared in the Feb. 2, 1998, Commerce Business Daily . The deadline for proposals is 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, May 13, 1998.
For more information, including an ATP Proposal Preparation Kit, contact the ATP at (800) ATP-FUND (287-3863), fax: (301) 926-9524 or email: atp@nist.gov.
Media Contact:
Michael Baum (301) 975-2763
Baldrige Awards
Two New Quality Categories Proposed for FY 1999
Non-profit education and health care organizations will be able to apply for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award next year if funding is approved as part of President Clinton's fiscal year 1999 budget proposal. The proposed budget includes $2.3 million for the new award categories. The new Baldrige award programs could help these organizations improve performance.
In May 1997, the private Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award announced a $15 million endowment drive to help establish the new awards, provided federal funding also is available.
The education and health care sectors have expressed strong interest in establishing Baldrige awards for these communities. In 1995, NIST conducted a successful pilot program to determine the interest and readiness of these organizations in participating in a Baldrige Award program. Since then, federal funding has not been available to continue the pilots or to establish award categories.
More than 40 state quality award programs are based on the Baldrige Award program, and 35 of these recognize health care and education organizations.
The 1999 budget also includes $3.1 million for the existing Baldrige Quality Award for businesses.
Media Contact:
Jan Kosko (301) 975-2767
Chemistry
Largest Ever Expansion of Mass Spectral Database Available
Analytical chemists now can take advantage of improved accuracy and a 75 percent expansion of the NIST/EPA/NIH Mass Spectral Database for personal computers. Scientists use this tool for identifying unknown compounds.
The new version, NIST 98, now includes the largest expansion ever of the NIST mass spectral library, bringing the total number of spectra to nearly 130,000 and the number of compounds to more than 107,000. In addition to the expansion, NIST 98 reflects improved accuracy resulting from a 10-year, spectrum-by-spectrum review of the entire library by a team of experienced mass spectrometrists.
NIST 98 can run on personal computers with Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95 or Windows NT, and requires 120 megabytes available hard disk space. The price is $2,090. Owners of a previous version may upgrade for $750.
For more information, or to order the database, contact the Standard Reference Data Program, Rm. 113, Bldg. 820, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-0001, (301) 975-2208; fax: (301) 926-0416, srdata@nist.gov.
Media Contact:
Linda Joy (301) 975-4403
Space
NIST Helps Shuttle Fly Free of Flaws in Flow Measurement
Researchers in NIST's Physical and Chemical Properties Division, Boulder, Colo., have designed and successfully tested meters for measuring the flow of liquids and gases in the main engines of NASA's space shuttle. Pressure loss increases as the square of the flow velocity, so the pressure loss across a conventional flowmeter can become unacceptably large at high flow velocities. Therefore, the NIST researchers developed flowmeters (called vortex shedding flowmeters) that could assess such flows without the pressure loss problem.
The NIST flowmeters are designed to measure flow under conditions found in selected ducts of the shuttle's main engines where higher than normal velocities are encountered. Flow measurement of the ducts is need to monitor and control the engines during flight. NIST researchers found the presence of bends in the duct near the flowmeter actually increased its performance, particularly in signal quality. This is in contrast to traditional situations where flowmeters are placed in long, straight sections of duct for maximum efficiency.
One innovative method used during the testing of the new shuttle flowmeter was when NIST scientists simulated the flow of liquid oxygen with a municipal hydroelectric plant's water flow system.
A paper describing the flowmeter research, no. 2-98, is available from Sarabeth Harris, MC 104, NIST, Boulder, Colo. 80303-3328, (303) 497-3237, sarabeth@boulder.nist.gov.
Media Contact:
Fred McGehan (Boulder) (303) 497-3246
U.S. Department of Commerce
Technology Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Editor: Michael Newman
HTML conversion: Crissy Wines
Last Updated: February 18, 1998
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