Xah Lee's Unixism

[Stan Barr]

On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:04:05 GMT, Larry Elmore <ljelmore_ at _comcast_._net> wrote:
>No, but some Liberty ships built in WWII, welded together from pre-fab 
>sections, literally broke in half when the welds failed (IIRC, in very 
>cold water like the Barents sea).

Yep, the welding changed the structure of the steel and an unfortunately
placed hatch coaming created a high stress point.  The cold made the
weld brittle and it cracked.

>The problem was fixed by welding large 
>reinforcing "patches" on either side of the weak point in the hull.

That was a temporary solution, they later designed a re-inforced hatch
setup IIRC.

The ship was basically an 1880s British design not originally intended 
to be welded up out of pre-fabricated bits :-)

-- 
Cheers,
Stan Barr     stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!