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Originally Posted by Bubblehead Nuke
They factor cyclic stress from surfacing and diving over the projected life of the hull, add a few fudge factors for the estimated weakest penetration and then put in a 30% safety margin (30% is a GUESS here folks). They call this number on american subs test depth. It is the normal maximum operational depth that a sub can operate at.
Everything is calculated by some big egg head in the sky and we only hope they lubed up the slide rule before they figured all this out. As the ship age and go thru ship alts they modify this number. Some of the older nuke boats actually had their max depth REDUCED because they had exceeded the calculations based on life of the ship.
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I got my undergraduate degree in engineering. In almost all cases of structural design work I've seen we usually see about a 100-200% safety margin. But those were all civillian engineering applications (bridges, building frames, etc.) We calculated the maximum stress that the structure needed to withstand and then designed the loading points to fail under twice that amount. However, estimation, conservative guessimates and worst case scenario are factored into just about every point in those estimates with the true failure stress of a load point really an unknown. It really is a shot in the dark, but one could probably be reasonable to think that a new sub without any damage could sustain alot more than its crush depth and live to tell about it, like you've already mentioned.
As far as Russian subs go... man, its hard to say. The russians don't have a very good reputation for safety that's for sure. One *could* think that the double hull design of the Russian subs would give them a relatively deep crush depth... but then again would the same stress safety margins apply to their structural design in the first place? Perhaps the russian *crush depth* isn't as conservative an estimate... or maybe its more conservative... impossible to tell. I wouldn't be opposed to a 2000ft ingame crush depth for the Akula. Perhaps if even just an ingame reflection of the will of the Russian navy to push safety limits... (also a blatant stereotype)