around-me

Thanks to Slashdot.org my host died yesterday due to visits and was down until tomorrow’s morning. Now I have moved to a friends’ hosting (thanks to kivisild.net) and online and living.

Thanks for visiting my blog and stay tuned :)

Who is an engineer?

Engineer is one who is responsible for building or creating something according to a set of guidelines, instructions and/or specifications which performs needed functions without failures. Though technologies are that widespread that we can build faster and safer, but when it’s about human nature - it’s always about human factor. According to the Murphy’s law: if something can fail, eventually it will.

Why engineering disaster?

The reason why we consider a failure as an engineering disaster is perception of risk. For example during a year approximately the same number of people die in accidents involving trains, bicycles and airplanes. But perception of risk is much different in these types of accidents. When a plane is going to crash no one inside is in control of the situation and if one plane crashes much more people die rather than in accident involving bicycle.

What causes a disaster?

Causes of engineering disasters can be merged into next groups:

• Failure of engineering ethics (”human factor”, miscalculations, etc)
• Extreme/unpredicted environmental conditions (that were not taken into consideration)
• Improper design (many of which are also the result of unethical practices)
• Materials failures

In this post I’ll try to cover these causes by 10 examples of most shocking engineering disasters in history.

• Concorde was the fastest transatlantic passenger’s airline. It could develop near super-sonic speed and carry more than hundred passengers. The airline was suspended due to the Concorde plane crash during the take-off. The crash killed all passengers (100) plus 9 crew members.

  Cause:

  Quote from official report:
  

  “[…]during the take-off run the front right tire of the left main landing gear was destroyed

  […], probably after having run over a piece of metal;

  - the destruction of the tire caused damage, either directly or indirectly, to the aircraft

  structure and systems, causing the aircraft to crash less than one minute and thirty

  seconds after the destruction of the tire. The damage sequence and the connections

  between the various events have not yet been fully established.[…]”

  Conclusion:

  “the Certificates of Airworthiness for Concorde be suspended until

  appropriate measures have been taken to guarantee a satisfactory level of

  safety with regard to the risks associated with the destruction of tires.”

  Simple tire damage eventually destroyed whole plane.
  

• NASA’s Shuttle is a spacecraft that is used by the United States government for human missions in Space. In 1986 second Shuttle named Challenger blew up shortly after the launch, on it’s 10th mission.

  Quote from official report:

  “On the morning of January 28, 1986 Challenger was destroyed

  73 seconds after launch during the 25th mission. The seven-member crew perished.

  Early in its investigation, the Commission identified the mechanical cause of the accident to be the failure of the joint of one of the Solid Rocket Boosters. The Commission found that the design was not well understood by the engineers that operated it and that it had not been adequately tested.”

  After the tragedy Shuttle project was suspended for 32 months for investigation of special commission appointed by the president Ronald Reagan.
  

• In 2003 the disaster has repeated with Columbia shuttle - the first space shuttle launched in 1981.

  “The incident was caused by improper wiring in the R5 cargo door latching mechanism. At the time, the design of the 747-122 provided a small window situated flush against each of the cargo doors, so that the ground crew could visually confirm that the doors’ latches were set to the locked position. There were, however, several flaws in this design. It didn’t allow a particularly close look at the door latches, and it didn’t show the entire latching mechanism, which made the complete inspection of the latched door impossible. With these factors in place, an accident was bound to occur, and finally did on this flight.”
  

  Result: the Shuttle project is suspended again for further investigation.

• Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 800 was an international passenger flight which type is Boeing 747. On July 23th in 1996 the plane crashed shortly after takeoff (approximately after 12 minutes) due to fuel tank explosion and many safety issues as claimed by commission investigating the case and killing more than 200 passengers and crew members.

  Possible reasons for the in-flight breakup.

  Witness reports and the distribution of wreckage indicated a catastrophic in-flight breakup of TWA 800. The NTSB considered as possible causes “structural failure and decompression; detonation of a high-energy explosive device, such as a bomb exploding inside the airplane or a missile warhead exploding upon impact with the airplane; and a fuel/air explosion in the center wing tank (CWT).”

• Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev 154M passenger jet on route from Moscow, Russia to Barcelona, Spain collided with DHL cargo jet flying from Bergamo, Italy to Brussels, Belgium in mid-air on July 1st, 2002 over the towns of Owingen and Überlingen in Germany, (near Lake Constance), killing all 71 aboard both aircraft. German official investigators determined on May 19, 2004, that the accident had been caused by problems within the air traffic control system and problems with the use of the collision warning system. On February 24, 2004, the controller, that is believed to be sleeping on duty at the time, Dane Peter Nielsen, was stabbed to death by Vitaly Kaloyev who had lost his wife and two children in the accident.
• What would you add to the list?

Regarding to a comment in recent post about LHC I made a little research on whether the LHC is a real danger to human being or just a science project aimed to help us understand how the Universe was made.

The comment was posted by Jason:

[…]these “geniuses” already made a gigantic miscalculation and destroyed, nay, shattered one of their magnets due to a design flaw that was undetected by everyone since the original drafts were made. This is not something to take lightly. Anytime there is human involvement there is a large chance for human error. We are fucked. Don’t forget about Murphy’s law.

Although taking into consideration different factors around any project scientists can measure and estimate the error percent, but there is always a human factor that leads to an error and then… No one can estimate the consequences.

The same happened to the LHC when it was in a building stage (April 2007):

[…] The mistakes led to an explosion deep in the tunnel at the CERN particle accelerator complex near Geneva in Switzerland. It lifted a 20-ton magnet off its mountings, filling a tunnel with helium gas and forcing an evacuation.

It means that 24 magnets located all around the 17-mile circular accelerator must now be stripped down and repaired or upgraded.

Dr Lyn Evans, who leads the accelerator construction project at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research, said the explosion had been potentially very dangerous.

“There was a hell of a bang, the tunnel housing the machine filled with helium and dust and we had to call in the fire brigade to evacuate the place,” he said. “The people working on the test were frightened to death but they were all in a safe place so no-one was hurt.” An investigation by CERN researchers found “fundamental” flaws that caused the explosion, close to the CMS detector, one of the LHC’s most important experiments. Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626728.ece

At some point Jason is right - even taking into account huge experience of engineers and scientists there is always place for disturbance, boredom, depression, frustration, nervousness, tension - conditions where any human being can make a mistake, even irretrievable one. But who doesn’t make mistakes? Only those who do nothing and solution for not making a mistake is simple - just sit in a corner and do nothing.

Latest posts related to CERN’s project LHC:

• LHC interesting facts, why the launch is delayed again?

• Interesting links about LHC + pictures

• CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

• A brief overview of LHC history or what is the past of the largest scientific research project

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

Based underneath the line that separates France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider has become the center of scientific endeavor for the general public to focus on. First prophesied to bring ruin to the whole universe (or at least that little bit that surrounds us), the LHC has now been deemed safe. Subsequently, knowing that it won’t blast us all (or suck us all) into a black hole, the LHC has begun commissioning.

Set to have its first particle beams injected in August of this year, the LHC must first bring its temperature down, so as to obtain the highest possible magnetic fields while consuming the least amount of power.

In other words, the over 1600 magnets that make up the 27 kilometer long tunnel must be brought to low temperatures so that the electrical current being channeled along its length experience zero resistance and very little power loss.

Currently, six out of the eight sectors making up the LHC have been brought down to between 4.5 and 1.9 Kelvin, which equals out to be around -270C and -454F. The commissioning cooling will be complete when all eight sectors reach 1.9 Kelvin. For comparison, the temperature in deep space measures in at about 2.7 Kelvin.

Needless to say, given the time that it takes to cool these objects down, and the delays that could occur if a mistake is made, the LHC teams are meticulous. “We have a very systematic process for the commissioning of this machine, based on very carefully designed procedures prepared with experience we have gathered on prototypes,” said Roberto Saban, the LHC’s head of hardware commissioning.

“Our motto is: no short cuts… exchanging a single component which today is cold, is like bringing it back from the Moon. It takes about three to four weeks to warm it up. Then it takes one or two weeks to exchange. Then it needs three to six weeks to cool down again. So, you see, it is three months if we make a mistake.”

Obviously one of the most high profile searches that the LHC will be conducting is for the fabled god-particle, the Higgs Boson. The discovery of this particle would go a long way towards the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity.

But there are other discoveries hoping to be made through the whizzing and crashing particles bouncing around inside the LHC; questions such as “are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons?” and “what is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?”

Posted by Josh Hill.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7512586.stm

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

Note:

Collider’s launch was postponed for a whole month and now it’s to be launched on 08.08.08.