Would the rivets being underwater have had any effect during stress testing.

[Stephen Calcutt]

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum and I'd like to ask a question that has been at the back of my head for some time now. When some of Titanic's rivets and hull plating were recovered from the wreck and tested in order to observe their tensile strength. Would the fact the rivets and hull plating being underwater for nearly a hundred years when the test was conducted along with metal-eating bacteria have had any bearing as to the lack of ductility of Titanic's rivets that was found when they were being tested? I apologize if this is a silly question I'm asking.

 

[Richard C Elliott]

Not silly at all. The bacterial decomposition and chemical corrosion would obviously make a difference to the strength of a rivet or plate as a whole component, but they wouldn't measure it that way.

The corrosive effects generally wouldn't penetrate through the full thickness of the component so they would cut out a bar of measured dimensions from the undamaged inner iron or steel and measure the tensile strength of that, scaling it to the standard units of newtons/square metre. Then they would use that value for the tensile strength of the material to calculate the tensile strength of the original, uncorroded components.

 

[Stephen Calcutt]

Ah, I understand! Thank you for the explanation.