Titanic's rivets

[Thomas Ozel]

Were the rivets weak?

In the 2012 documentary: Titanic At 100: Mystery Solved, researchers Daniel Butler and Parks Stephenson traveled to the University of Washington, where they watched strength tests being conducted on steel plating, that was held together by historically correct replica's of the ship's iron rivets. The steel was put in a machine that applied crushing force on the metal, in order to test the theory that all of the rivets in one section would fail, once a single rivet had popped out under severe pressure. During the test, a rivet failed but the others picked up the load and remained in position, keeping the replica seam watertight. The conclusion presented in the documentary was that the whilst the iceberg collision did cause rivets to pop out of their plating, it was due to the overwhelming force of the impact, rather than faulty rivets.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Were the rivets weak?<<

Nope. Take a look at the wreck. Except for the midsection which suffered catastrophic failure, the overwhelming majority of the rivets are right where the builder put them over a century ago. The whole weak rivets thing came for an analysis of a few failed rivets found in the debris field of uncertain origin and amounted to no more then...if memory serves....26 rivets.

The Titanic had over 2,500,000 rivets in the hull.

 

[Ioannis Georgiou]

Even in the midsection there are plenty of rivets in place. There are parts were the steel is bend over 90° and the rivets are in place. Even in other pieces like the big piece or the large tower from the 3rd funnel are still keep together by the rivets.

The bad rivets and brittle steel is a modern myth.

 

[TitanicNerd]

So wait, the rivets weren't weak. They broke because of overwhelming force?

 

[Mark Baber]

Moderator's note: Two pointless messages have been removed from this thread. Please do not post messages which make no meaningful contribution to the discussion.

 

[J Sheehan]

It's been said that somewhere in the region of 3 million rivets were use to built Titanic.

But is that number actually accurate?

I ask this as I once read an article about the Queen Mary which said that 4 millions rivets were used in her construction, but then I read another article about the Queen Mary which said that 10 million rivets were used.

Also how many nuts, bolts, screws and nails were used in Titanic's construction?