If the disk ruptured and there was no electricity, it might be impossible to close the valve, and the venting would be permanent.
Disks — the spine's shock absorbers — are sheathed in a fibrous casing called the annulus, which protects their gelatinous core, and when a disk ruptures bits of it break through the casing.
Such injuries typically occur in short-legged, long-torso breeds of dogs, like dachshunds, beagles, corgis, Pekingese and Shih Tzus, which can lose use of their back legs when a disk ruptures spontaneously and damages the spinal cord.
When the powder temperature reached 130 °C and the burst disk ruptured at 9 bar hydrogen overpressure the behavior of the expelled powder was monitored using a high speed camera, an IR camera as well as sound level meters.
Douglas E. True, the president of ERIN Engineering and Research of Walnut Creek, Calif., said: "In some cases you can argue it might be better to have a rupture disk.
He said he continued to believe that a passive system, like one using a rupture disk, would work better and could be set to rupture at a pressure just slightly less than the pressure at which the containment would rupture.
Officials suspect that the mud could have been escaping from the well far below the ocean floor, possibly through a rupture disk, a built-in weak point in the steel pipe that lines the well.
After a depressurization accident the pressure of the confinement increases and the rupture disk will break.
There is a rupture disk of overpressure protection in the confinement wall.
