1/7/2024 0 Comments Boston molasses flood photosShe became interested in the molasses flood after helping teach a class at Harvard University, in which a group of undergraduate students created a scaled model of the event. Once the floodgates opened, the principles of fluid dynamics compounded the problem, says Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer in Denver, and author of FYFD, a fluid-dynamics website. Initial Wave of Molasses Moved Terrifyingly Fast The salt water of the harbor "cut" the molasses and eventually the welders could see the structure of the original tank to cut into it to find bodies. Even though firemen constantly sprayed water upon the twisted wreckage, it wasn't until the city ordered powerful streams from the city fireboat that the molasses began to disappear. Welders carefully began cutting up the molasses tank with torches in the search for bodies five days after the flood. A similar flaw, he adds, befell some of the early Liberty ships built by the U.S. “There were a lot of culprits,” Rossow says. Its brittleness might have been a final straw. The air temperature on the day of the disaster was about 40☏. That gave it a high transition temperature, making the metal brittle when it cooled below 59☏. What engineers didn’t know at the time, Rossow says, was that the steel had been mixed with too little manganese. “When a laborer brought actual shards of steel from the tank’s walls into the treasurer’s office as evidence of the potential danger,” Rossow wrote in a 2015 analysis, “he replied, ‘I don’t know what you want me to do. Before the tank blew, children would bring cups to fill with sweet molasses that dripped out of it. But the tank had been built quickly in the winter of 1915 to meet rising demand for industrial alcohol, which could be distilled from molasses and sold to weapons companies, who used it to make dynamite and other explosives for use during World War I.Īnd instead of inspecting the tank and filling it with water first to test it for flaws, USIA ignored all warning signs, including groaning noises every time it was filled. At that point, the tank held enough molasses to fill 3.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools.īoth the inadequate thickness and rivet issues were signs of negligence, and structural engineers knew better at the time, says Rossow. The fourth top-off happened two days before the disaster when a ship arrived from Puerto Rico carrying 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Although molasses had been poured into the container 29 times, only four of those refills were to near capacity. But its steel walls, which ranged from 0.67 inches at the bottom to 0.31 inches at the top, were too thin to support the weight of a full tank of molasses, found a 2014 analysis by Ronald Mayville, a senior structural engineer in the Massachusetts consulting firm of Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger.įlawed rivet design was another problem, according to Mayville’s analysis, and stresses were too high on the rivet holes, where cracks first formed. Designed to hold 2.5 million gallons of liquid, it measured 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter. More recent investigations suggest several fundamental problems with the structure of the tank. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, was found liable, even as many questions remained about what had actually happened. The trial that ensued lasted for years and gathered input from thousands of expert witnesses, producing 20,000 pages of conflicting testimony. “Explosion Theory Favored by Expert,” reported the Boston Evening Globe. Some blamed anarchists for setting off a bomb. In the immediate aftermath, news coverage included speculation about fermentation that produced too much pressure inside the tank.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |