Titanium is expensive. So people that build hulls (not the superstructure, let's take that as a given) out of titanium tend to make those hulls fairly thin. Containers are made out of thick chunks of angle and square profile welded together, with huge sheets of steel in a double wall in order to make the structure rigid. So rigid that you can stack them 10 to 15 high loaded without any of them buckling.
If you ram something like that (at it's own velocity, which will be roughly the speed of the current) at a vessel made out of titanium (thin, because it is expensive) then you're essentially aiming a can opener at a can.
I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted.
FTR my somewhat checkered career included working for a sail making company and I've seen a few boats that had very mild collisions at sea and on the larger lakes and those definitely did not look pretty. I've never seen a boat come back that had had a head-on encounter with something the size of a container.
Titanium is a great material, but it is (very) hard to work, if used properly can give you the same strength as steel for a lighter weight. But due to the higher material costs and higher costs to work it you will more than likely end up with a boat that is just as expensive as a steel one with slightly less displacement or you'll end up with a boat that is much more expensive than a steel one.
In the end whether or not you will survive a container encounter depends to a very large degree on what the relative velocities are and how the container is oriented relative to your boat. If the container is dead in the water and you hit it at a 45 degree angle no amount of metallurgy will stop you from having a breached hull unless you go for something that will also survive impact with an iceberg.
Which reminds me of some other captain that was convinced his boat could handle anything the ocean could throw at him.
> I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted.
If you ram something like that (at it's own velocity, which will be roughly the speed of the current) at a vessel made out of titanium (thin, because it is expensive) then you're essentially aiming a can opener at a can.
I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted.
FTR my somewhat checkered career included working for a sail making company and I've seen a few boats that had very mild collisions at sea and on the larger lakes and those definitely did not look pretty. I've never seen a boat come back that had had a head-on encounter with something the size of a container.
Titanium is a great material, but it is (very) hard to work, if used properly can give you the same strength as steel for a lighter weight. But due to the higher material costs and higher costs to work it you will more than likely end up with a boat that is just as expensive as a steel one with slightly less displacement or you'll end up with a boat that is much more expensive than a steel one.
In the end whether or not you will survive a container encounter depends to a very large degree on what the relative velocities are and how the container is oriented relative to your boat. If the container is dead in the water and you hit it at a 45 degree angle no amount of metallurgy will stop you from having a breached hull unless you go for something that will also survive impact with an iceberg.
Which reminds me of some other captain that was convinced his boat could handle anything the ocean could throw at him.
Be safe.