This one deals with the sheer amount of force involved in the Dali pylon strike, estimates ranging between 12 million and 100 million newtons. It’s absolutely fascinating for geeks like myself, not that there’s anyone else like that in this community, no, of course not:
Our lowest estimate of how much force it would take to slow the Dali, if it were fully loaded, is around 12 million newtons, about a third of the force it took to launch the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo moon missions.
And our higher-end estimates, reviewed by several civil engineering experts, suggest it is realistic to put the force of the impact with the pier at upward of 100 million newtons.
The article then goes through a number of equations, tables and illustrations, then concludes:
Our own calculations are also an oversimplification. We don’t try to account for the ship’s rotation, the angle of the collision, and exactly how and where it collided with the pier (a smaller force applied in the wrong place can be more damaging than a large force applied elsewhere). The container ship would have also dragged a sizable amount of water with it, which would add its own momentum.
But the point is: Even the widest reasonable range is on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of newtons — a mind-bogglingly large force, by any estimate.
Just saw another great article in the same series, here’s a gift link (article unlocked):
Force of Ship Impact Was on the Scale of a Rocket Launch - NYTimes
This one deals with the sheer amount of force involved in the Dali pylon strike, estimates ranging between 12 million and 100 million newtons. It’s absolutely fascinating for geeks like myself, not that there’s anyone else like that in this community, no, of course not:
The article then goes through a number of equations, tables and illustrations, then concludes:
Well worth the read, for anyone interested.