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Decoding Disasters
An Engineering Approach to Understanding Technical Failures and Natural Catastrophes

Anthony Sofronas (Author)

9781394319503, Wiley

Hardback, published 26 January 2026

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.64 kg

Understanding failures and disasters using case studies and simple engineering techniques

Decoding Disasters provides illustrated failure case histories on a multitude of technologies and shows how engineering analysis can explain and help professionals understand them. For each case, the analysis technique is included so that the reader can adapt and apply it to their own situation. Different techniques are developed to show how the methods can be applied in various disciplines. This book guides readers to determine what likely occurred in each case with a minimum amount of data and without speculating.

Each example in this book states the problem, theorizes a conceptual cause, verifies the cause by analysis (i.e. a mathematical model) and actual data, shows the use of the various engineering equations, and documents a solution.

In this comprehensive guide, readers will learn about:

  • Viewing disasters not solely as a matter of emergency response, but also more holistically as social constructs between natural extremes, human populations, and the built environment
  • Economic, environmental, and human impacts of disasters
  • How growth calculations can evaluate the past and present and be applied to likely future events
  • Disasters stemming from shortcuts in the design process to meet the demands and needs of society

This book is an excellent learning resource not only for practicing engineers, but also government and regulatory officials who can enact changes to prevent future repeat failures.

Introduction xv

Acknowledgments xvii

1 Methods for Analyzing Failures 1

1.1 Mathematical Modeling 2

1.2 Methods for Solving Problems 4

1.2.1 The Scientific Method 4

1.3 The Crack Growth Equation 5

1.4 Failure of Carbon Fibers in Compressive Fatigue 7

1.5 Failure of Carbon Fiber, Titanium, and Steel in Compressive Fatigue 8

1.6 Cycles to Failure for Carbon Fiber Laminate and Stainless Steel 10

1.6.1 Summary 11

1.7 Ockham’s Razor 12

2 Industrial Mechanical Equipment Failures 13

2.1 Failure in a Large Stirred Processing Reactor 13

2.1.1 Hydraulic Cyclic Force on Support Bolting and Support Plate 15

2.1.2 Product Chunk Impact on Support 16

2.1.3 Summary 18

2.2 Stress on Spline Shaft Due to Extruder Wear 19

2.2.1 Summary 20

2.3 Ship Propeller Impact Damage 20

2.3.1 Summary 23

2.4 How a Turbojet Aircraft Engine Works and Fails 23

2.5 Failure of a G.E. CF-6-6 Turbofan Disk on a DC- 10 25

2.5.1 Summary 28

2.6 Loss of a Turbofan Blade 28

2.6.1 Summary 30

3 Industrial Vibration Failures 33

3.1 An Actual Aircraft Engine-Gearbox-Propeller Torsional System 33

3.1.1 Summary 37

3.2 Coupling Failure: Motor-Gearbox-High Speed Compressor System 38

3.2.1 Summary 41

3.3 Slip-stick Phenomena 41

3.4 Windshield Wiper Chatter Problem 43

3.4.1 Summary 45

3.5 Catastrophic Failure of a Vibrating Centrifuge Deck 45

3.5.1 Summary 47

4 Catastrophic Implosion of the Deep Sea Submersible Titan 49

4.1 Titan Deep Diving Vessel Implosion 49

4.2 Evidence from Titan Debris 53

4.3 The Titan Submersible Design 53

4.3.1 Summary 55

5 Potential Earth Catastrophes 57

5.1 What Is the Chance the 2029 Asteroid Apophis Will Impact Earth? 57

5.1.1 Summary 59

5.2 What Damage Would an Asteroid Impact Such as Apophis Cause? 60

5.2.1 Summary 61

5.3 What If the Chelyabinsk Meteor Had Impacted Earth? 63

5.3.1 Summary 63

5.4 Preventing an Asteroid from Impacting Earth 63

5.4.1 Summary 66

5.5 The Damage Potential of Solar Flares 66

6 Flight Dynamics and Major Disasters 69

6.1 How Does an Aircraft Fly? 69

6.1.1 Summary 70

6.1.2 Summary 70

6.2 Stalls and Flat Spins and Crash of Flight 2283 71

6.2.1 Summary 72

6.3 How Can a Drone Helicopter Fly on Mars? 73

6.3.1 Summary 74

6.4 Disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH 370 75

6.4.1 Summary 76

6.5 Why Did the Nose Wheel Collapse on a Boeing 767? 77

6.6 What Happened to the Space Shuttle Columbia? 78

6.6.1 Summary 80

6.7 Why Did the Door Blow Out of a Boeing 737 Max 9? 80

6.7.1 Summary 82

6.8 Why Did Hail Destroy the Nose of an Airbus 320? 83

6.8.1 Summary 85

6.9 Damage Due to Tire Falling Off Boeing 777 Aircraft 86

6.9.1 Summary 87

6.10 How Does a Hummingbird Fly? 87

6.10.1 Summary 88

6.11 How Do Fish Swim? 88

6.11.1 Summary 90

6.12 Tourism Helicopter Crashes into Hudson River 90

6.12.1 Summary 91

6.13 More Data on the Crash of Bell 206L into the Hudson 92

6.13.1 Summary 94

6.14 Air India Flight 171 Crash 94

6.14.1 Summary 95

7 Impact Disasters 97

7.1 Average and Peak Impact Force 97

7.1.1 Summary 98

7.2 Examining the Head-on Impact of Two Vehicles 99

7.2.1 Summary 101

7.3 Design Use of the Head-on Impact Equation 102

7.4 Can a Water Filled Membrane Bag Be Used as a Safety Device? 102

7.4.1 Summary 105

7.5 What Happens When a Turkey Vulture Hits a Car? 105

7.5.1 Summary 106

7.6 High Speed Closing Mechanism 106

7.6.1 Summary 108

7.7 Analyzing the Force of a Sudden Impact 108

7.7.1 Summary 109

7.8 Getting Hit on the Head with a Beer Bottle 110

7.8.1 Summary 112

7.9 Deep Penetrating Bomb 113

7.9.1 Summary 115

7.10 Precision Immobility Technique or (PIT) 116

7.10.1 Summary 118

8 Structural Failures 119

8.1 What Causes Tower Cranes to Collapse? 119

8.2 Walkway Collapse 121

8.2.1 Summary 122

8.3 Bridge Collapse with Ship Impact 122

8.3.1 Summary 123

8.4 Collapse of Electrical Power Transmission Towers 123

8.4.1 Summary 125

8.5 The Progressive Failure Collapse of Structurally Deficient Buildings 126

8.5.1 Summary 127

8.6 High-voltage Tower Failures and Vortices 127

8.6.1 Summary 128

8.7 Are Swaying Skyscrapers Dangerous? 129

8.7.1 Summary 132

9 Concerns Relating to Heat Transfer 133

9.1 Elevated Temperature in a Vehicle 133

9.1.1 Summary 134

9.2 How Long Should It Take to Heat My Home? 134

9.2.1 Summary 137

9.3 Fireplace Heat Transfer 137

9.3.1 Summary 138

9.4 Raising the Air Temperature of a Room with a Gas Fireplace 139

9.4.1 Summary 139

10 Catastrophic Explosions 141

10.1 Can a Kitchen Full of Natural Gas Destroy a Home? 141

10.1.1 Summary 142

10.2 Would the Home Water Heater Explode? 142

10.2.1 Summary 144

10.3 Would the Pressure Cooker Actually Explode? 145

10.3.1 Summary 146

10.4 How Does an Underground Pipeline Explode? 146

10.4.1 Summary 148

10.5 Explosive Effect of a Volume of Enclosed Vapor 148

10.5.1 Summary 149

11 Natural Disasters 151

11.1 How Are Tornados Formed? 151

11.1.1 Summary 152

11.2 Force of a Tornado 152

11.2.1 Summary 153

11.3 How Are Hurricanes Formed? 155

11.3.1 Summary 157

11.4 The Effect of a Hurricane’s Storm Surge 158

11.4.1 Summary 159

11.5 Determining a Hurricane’s Path 159

11.5.1 Summary 162

11.6 The Lateral Sliding and Vertical Uplift Earthquake Models 162

11.6.1 Summary 165

11.7 Yellowstone Caldera Is Rising, When Will It Erupt? 166

11.7.1 Summary 169

11.8 Why the Yellowstone Caldera Plate Surface Doesn’t Get Hot 170

11.9 The Next Great Tsunami 171

11.9.1 Summary 173

11.10 What Causes Straight-line Wind Damage? 173

11.11 Will the Tilting Tree Uproot? 174

11.11.1 Summary 176

11.12 Why Didn’t the Tree Limb Break? 176

11.12.1 Summary 178

11.13 Why Did the Tree Splinter in a Hurricane? 178

11.13.1 Summary 181

11.14 Some Final Thoughts About Trees 182

11.14.1 Summary 183

12 Catastrophes Relating to Flooding Disasters 185

12.1 A Simple Explanation of Flooding Using a Bathtub Analogy 185

12.2 Why Didn’t My Home Flood? 188

12.2.1 Summary 192

12.3 Why Does Lake Houston Rise Above the Spillway? 193

12.3.1 Summary 195

12.4 Kingwood Texas Flooding May 1–3, 2024 195

12.4.1 Summary 196

12.5 What Caused the Street to Flood 196

12.5.1 Summary 199

12.6 Sudden Flooding of Kingwood Drive 199

12.6.1 Summary 200

12.7 Catastrophic Flooding of a River 201

12.7.1 Summary 202

13 Probabilities 203

13.1 Are We All Alone in the Universe? 204

13.2 What Is the Probability of a Piece of Machinery Failing This Year? 205

13.2.1 Reciprocating Gas-engine Compressors Failures 206

13.2.2 Pressure Vessels, Piping, Steam Boiler Failures 206

13.2.3 Other Types of Machinery Failures 207

13.2.3.1 Summary 207

14 Why Question the Ingenuity of Humans? 209

14.1 How Did the Egyptians Transport 75-ton Granite Stones from the Quarry? 209

14.1.1 Summary 210

14.2 How Were the Pyramids Built? 210

14.2.1 Summary 213

14.3 How Do the Ancient Move Mega-blocks on Hard Land? 213

14.3.1 Summary 214

14.4 Using a Human-powered Crane to Lift Mega-blocks 215

14.4.1 Summary 216

14.5 Moving Huge Pyramid Stones by Rolling 216

14.5.1 Summary 218

14.6 Moving Large Blocks with Rollers on Rails 218

14.6.1 Summary 219

15 Some Unusual Questions Answered 221

15.1 Why Does a Whip Make a Loud Crack Sound? 221

15.1.1 Summary 222

15.2 My Wife’s Broken Chair and a Failure Cause 222

15.2.1 Summary 224

15.3 Zero Is Equal to One or Mathematics Can Trick You 224

15.4 Why Won’t My Truck Start? 226

15.4.1 Summary 227

15.5 Force of a Hardball on a Bat and Hand 228

15.5.1 Summary 228

15.6 Why Doesn’t My Hand Hurt When I Hit a Nail With a Hammer? 229

15.6.1 Summary 230

15.7 Pop-out Strength of High-rise Windows 231

16 Engineering Equations Used in This Book Explained 233

16.1 Force Balance 233

16.2 Inertial Law or Newton’s Second Law 233

16.3 Centrifugal Force 234

16.4 Potential Energy (PE) 235

16.5 Kinetic Energy (KE) 235

16.6 Energy Balances in Mechanical 236

16.7 Energy Balance in Heat Transfer 236

16.8 Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation 237

16.9 The Specific Heat Equation 238

16.10 Shear Force and Pressures 239

16.11 Energy Caused by Frictional Rubbing and Shearing 240

16.12 The Momentum Equation and the Conservation of Momentum 241

16.13 Probability of Something Occurring in a Given Time 242

16.14 Developing Tsunami Surface Velocity and Wave Height 242

16.15 A Glancing Hail Strike 244

16.16 Frequency of a Pendulum 245

Index 247

Subject Areas: Chemistry [PN]
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