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Comment by stringfood | Hacker News Reader

Apparently if you put titanium and carbon fibre next to each other in salt water the titanium begans to corrode at quicker rate.

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> Therefore, there is no significant gap between titanium and carbon-fiber-reinforced composite to create galvanic corrosion. This means that commercially pure titanium and its alloys are completely resistant to galvanic corrosion when they are coupled with carbon composites.

Small things, e.g. insignificant rebellions, ah, gaps, do add up.

I see a problem in stress loads so. Titanium and carbon fibre composites behave differently under load. And at those depths, they are under a lot of load. These small differences induce additional stress at the critical joint between bulk heads and submarine body. That stress causes, over time, material fatigue.

That's why those components are, in most othee use cases, fatigue tested to their breaking point. Knowing that point, allows you to define a save service life for those components and replace thek way before they fail.

The article you cite says "Therefore, there is no significant gap between titanium and carbon-fiber-reinforced composite to create galvanic corrosion. This means that commercially pure titanium and its alloys are completely resistant to galvanic corrosion when they are coupled with carbon composites." This seems to be the opposite of what you are asserting.

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