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Post by Lurker on Jul 10, 2018 14:08:02 GMT
If we're talking about armor could you not use a concave lens placed in front of your ship to diverge lasers? therefore lessing the damage of the laser?
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Post by Lurker on Jul 10, 2018 14:49:19 GMT
Edit its lessening** Also an idea i had for capital ship armor was Deployable whipple shields. From an engineering stand point making these should be simple. something like this www.researchgate.net/publication/280388978_Origami_of_thick_panels Not a clue how links work here my apologies. So these origami metal sheets would unfold after being shot out of a low speed gun or something of the like and act as a whipple shield for incoming projectiles.
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Jul 10, 2018 14:59:31 GMT
The problem with deployable wipple shields is that you'd have to store them which adds mass and cost and takes up space on the ship increasing the volume and surface area. It makes more sense to have them pre-deployed over the ship, gun launched whipple "flak" has a good chance to miss and the flak launched would either be too thin to be effective or too massive to be fast/cheap. Maybe keeping extra plates would make sense for repairs.
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Post by Pttg on Jul 10, 2018 16:58:58 GMT
Bulk armor? Amorphous carbon. Whipple stuffing? Carbon areogel. Anti-Spalling layer? Carbon fiber. Ablative Laser armor? Graphite.
Is there anything carbon can't do?
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Post by Lurker on Jul 10, 2018 20:56:51 GMT
ghgh said {"The problem with deployable wipple shields is that you'd have to store them which adds mass and cost and takes up space on the ship increasing the volume and surface area. It makes more sense to have them pre-deployed over the ship, gun launched whipple "flak" has a good chance to miss and the flak launched would either be too thin to be effective or too massive to be fast/cheap. Maybe keeping extra plates would make sense for repairs."}
That is true, But if you have deployable whipple shields you don't need ones on your ship you only really need spall liner to catch the plasma (or whatever is left of the projectile(s)). Also you only need to fire these to "cover" your ship and as long as you are not say maneuvering the shields will stay along side front etc. Also note that when i say fire i'm using that term vary lightly as simply give these a small push should be adequate to give the distance needed for proper use.
But thank you for pointing that out. This is only a thought experiment.
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Post by Lurker on Jul 10, 2018 23:14:33 GMT
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Post by whiteweasel on Jul 11, 2018 1:32:33 GMT
Alright, I've came back with some results with my armor testing.
New armor: 3 mm of Aramid Fiber (Anti-spall layer) 5 cm of Boron Filament (Bulk armor) 40 cm of Graphite Aerogel (Whipple layer filler) 3 mm of Tin (whipple shield, and spall layer for the diamond coating) 1 mm of Diamond (Hard whipple shield coating to help break up projectiles)
This armor works better than my old amorphous carbon/s-glass/boron combo, and is much cheaper to boot. That said "better" is relative. My weapons are too good at drilling though the enemy ship for armor to matter much, but this armor is otherwise far more resilient to stock weapons, and stray shots/unconcentrated fire from my weapons. Also, I've noticed my sniper railguns do a lot of spalling damage when focus firing, regardless of any anti-spalling measures taken. But I guess several 100g projectiles hitting the same spot at 8km/s will do that regardless of the armor involved. What do you guys think of this armor?
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Post by lawson on Jul 11, 2018 3:26:22 GMT
I'm typically using a different pattern that may be out of date now, but has been working very well.
Typical capitol ship armor 3cm Magnesium 30cm Graphite Aerogel 3cm Magnesium 30cm Graphite Aerogel 2.5cm Amorphous carbon 5mm diamond.
The diamond/AM-carbon cap is good at bouncing projectiles and handles lasers pretty well when sloped. Magnesium is cheap, light, and holds up to the pressure of impacts after the aeorgel quenches the plasma. It also has a good ultimate over yield ratio so shouldn't spall much. The second stuffing and bulk layer gives me a second chance if the first top diamond/carbon layer is breached. Got a bullet-shaped drone testing ship with this armor and it tanks stock hell-fire drones like a champ. A flight of 20 only manages to strip my %40-70 of my turrets with no other damage. Need to find some better ways to hide my turrets.
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Post by doctorsquared on Jul 12, 2018 2:15:06 GMT
500μm PTFE (outermost) 3mm Magnesium 5cm Aluminum Foam 5mm Nitrile Rubber (innermost)
PTFE doesn't "melt" in the traditional sense as the molten material is so viscous that it doesn't visibly flow like other molten materials, which makes it really handy as an outer anti-laser layer.
Magnesium is cheap and sturdy enough to act as a decent layer to shatter lighter kinetic rounds and at least wick some energy away from heavier projectiles.
Aluminum Foam is heavier than the usual graphite aerogel, but is cheaper and has better mechanical properties for slowing shattered projectiles or absorbing plasma.
Nitrile Rubber is a good spall liner material.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 12, 2018 2:20:27 GMT
PTFE doesn't "melt" in the traditional sense as the molten material is so viscous that it doesn't visibly flow like other molten materials, which makes it really handy as an outer anti-laser layer. That's not simulated in any way whatsoever though. Not even melting is. Heating the material to its melting point is enough to destroy it, which results in extremely inaccurate performance in most cases. I suppose it might be a good approximation of ablation at low intensities, but it makes no sense for gigawatt beams.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Jul 12, 2018 3:01:53 GMT
Aluminum Foam is heavier than the usual graphite aerogel, but is cheaper and has better mechanical properties for slowing shattered projectiles or absorbing plasma I'm 90% sure Aluminum foam isn't stock.
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Post by treptoplax on Jul 12, 2018 17:28:02 GMT
Alright, I've came back with some results with my armor testing. New armor: 3 mm of Aramid Fiber (Anti-spall layer) 5 cm of Boron Filament (Bulk armor) 40 cm of Graphite Aerogel (Whipple layer filler) 3 mm of Tin (whipple shield, and spall layer for the diamond coating) 1 mm of Diamond (Hard whipple shield coating to help break up projectiles) This armor works better than my old amorphous carbon/s-glass/boron combo, and is much cheaper to boot. That said "better" is relative. My weapons are too good at drilling though the enemy ship for armor to matter much, but this armor is otherwise far more resilient to stock weapons, and stray shots/unconcentrated fire from my weapons. Also, I've noticed my sniper railguns do a lot of spalling damage when focus firing, regardless of any anti-spalling measures taken. But I guess several 100g projectiles hitting the same spot at 8km/s will do that regardless of the armor involved. What do you guys think of this armor? Looks pretty sound to me. If I was really optimizing for cost I would likely replace the boron filiment/armamid with AC/silk, but I don't think there'd be much point for your gunship. Obviously, what armor makes sense depends on the size, cost, and weapons on your ship. On a ship armed only with 100MW lasers, that armor would make no sense at all; the huge unarmored laser mirrors and radiators would be so fragile that anything other than perhaps a bit of anti-laser armor would be almost pointless. On a miniaturized railgun drone 25cm in diameter it wouldn't make sense either - anything beyond a bit of anti-laser or nuke flash armor would be silly (it's too small to hit with conventional guns, for the most part). It's worth thinking about the square-cube law. Bigger ships, all other things being equal, have lower acceleration but are less costly (in mass and credits) to armor. As an exercise once I took one of my designs and tripled it in all dimensions. 27x the mass, similar delta-V. One engine replaced with 9, so only 1/3 the acceleration. 9x the surface area so I could make the armor 3x thicker at a similar cost/mass-ratio to original design - I had 9x the weapons and radiators but it took it forever to empty the missile/drone magazines...
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Post by Pttg on Jul 12, 2018 19:20:10 GMT
Would like to point out that a laser star would likely be armored out of humanitarian concerns -- the crew wouldn't like to work on a ship that's no more sturdy than its giant aluminum mirror.
Yeah crews are replaceable and all that, but if they surrender immediately when the enemy comes within an AU, the ship isn't going to be all that useful.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Jul 13, 2018 22:07:52 GMT
Would like to point out that a laser star would likely be armored out of humanitarian concerns -- the crew wouldn't like to work on a ship that's no more sturdy than its giant aluminum mirror. Yeah crews are replaceable and all that, but if they surrender immediately when the enemy comes within an AU, the ship isn't going to be all that useful. Well, we also probably wouldn't use Lithium 6 (into Tritium) either for radiation shielding.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jul 14, 2018 8:45:43 GMT
Edit its lessening** Also an idea i had for capital ship armor was Deployable whipple shields. From an engineering stand point making these should be simple. something like this www.researchgate.net/publication/280388978_Origami_of_thick_panels Not a clue how links work here my apologies. So these origami metal sheets would unfold after being shot out of a low speed gun or something of the like and act as a whipple shield for incoming projectiles. The main problem with shooting whipple umbrellas at incoming fire is that those umbrellas then won't stay put - they are effectively a consumable. They will also limit manoeuvrability.
You could try emulating this idea by creating disposable armour plate drones using radiators and see how it works out.
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