NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Axis Nova helpped Me out with this

IC:T-90EX Main Battle Tank

I need some help for armor materials; I'm not sure what to put, though it will have that electric reactive armor stuff. Likewise I need help figuring out performance figures.

The thing will resemble a T-90 as far as looks go, though the gun will appear much smaller. However, due to the velocity of said gun, it'll be able to penetrate armor fairly easily, and the smaller weapon should leave more room inside the turret (some of which will be filled with capacitors for the main gun, of course).

Code Name: T-90 EXpanded
Unit Type: Main Battle Tank
Dimensions: Length 9.55 meters; width 3.79 meters; height 3.6 meters
Maximum Weight: 50.5
Powerplant: 1 x diesel turbine engine, 1750 HP
Propulsion: Standard-issue treads
Performance: Maximum land speed: 80 km/h (60km/h offroad)
Crew: 3 (commander, driver, gunner)

Offensive Weapon Systems:

1x 90mm linear cannon: A weapon which, like a railgun, uses electromagnetic forces rather than gunpowder to fire its projectiles. However, the conductive projectiles fired from a linear gun don't come into physical contact with the firing mechanism, and are instead accelerated using attractive and repulsive magnetic forces, as in a so-called magnetic levitation (maglev) train. Although the acceleration produced is relatively small compared to that of a railgun, a linear gun can yield similar muzzle velocities if its barrel is long enough, and the lack of physical contact eliminates friction heat and wear on the barrel. This gun benefits from the new helix-type accelerators and Geniestange projectile technology, allowing it both an impressive muzzle velocity and a limited degree of guidance on its' projectiles. It is capable of using multiple types of ammunition and can engage a great variety of targets. One feature is the ability to "burst" three shots one after the other, though this puts some strain on the tank's power systems. The main gun is mounted in a fairly standard turret mounting, set in the rear third of the hull. This particular example of the weapon is a similar model to that used in the Lion II GEV, with the design modified for use in an improved T-90 turret. The weapon recieves power from a rack of standard hyper capacitors, which recieve charge from the vehicle's engine.

1x KPV Kai 14.5mm machinegun: One is mounted at the commander's position, and may be either directly operated by him, or remotely operated from inside the turret. Fairly standard issue machinegun, firing caseless ammunition.

1x 14.5mm caseless machinegun: Standard issue caseless weapon. Mounted as a coaxial weapon.

Defensive Capabilities:

Titanium/ceramic/chobham composite armor provides protection against ballistics, ELRA provides defense against HEAT jets penetrating, advanced reactive armor provides further defense against penetrators and HEAT rounds. Anti-infantry panels mounted on skirts.

Sensors:

Equipped with millimeter wave radar and infrared sighting/night vision gear, along with a laser ranging system.

Powerplant:
The vehicle is powered by a 1750 horsepower diesel turbine engine.

Computer System:

A simple, but sturdy and effective fire control computer is installed along with the main gun.

Crew:

Three crew: commander, gunner, and driver. Commander and gunner sit in the turret, the driver in the hull.

Mobility:
The T-90EX is quite fast and agile for a tracked vehicle.


The T90-EX is relatively easy to transport, and can be loaded onto any number of different high-capacity aircraft or vessels.

Interesting.

I have some design questions, however.

The power requirements needed to power such an impressive gun would be quite heavy. Can I assume that the diesel engine listed also charges capacitors/batteries of the main gun? If so, at full engine power, how long does it take to charge the main gun?

Also, I noticed that you mount "anti-infantry" panels on the flanks of the vehicle. What, exactly, are those? I assume explosives, but I would like to be sure.

The linear gun is powered by a bank of hyper capacitors (high-density capacitors using superconductors to pack in more energy), which is charged using excess power when the main gun isn't firing. The design was originally meant for the capacitor to be quickly 'topped off' by a support vehicle with a fusion reactor, but it can be charged by anything with the appropriate connectors, even a diesel engine, albiet more slowly.

The anti-infantry panels consist, basically, of many small hexagons of explosives with steel pellets on top. All the tank commander has to do is mash the control for the appropriate section of the hull and whoever is standing in the wrong place gets shredded.

Interesting.

I have some design questions, however.

The power requirements needed to power such an impressive gun would be quite heavy. Can I assume that the diesel engine listed also charges capacitors/batteries of the main gun? If so, at full engine power, how long does it take to charge the main gun?

Also, I noticed that you mount "anti-infantry" panels on the flanks of the vehicle. What, exactly, are those? I assume explosives, but I would like to be sure.

It is not possible to do what he says. I thought I already made this point quiet clear to another guy in the 'super' tank thread. The thing about it being mag-lev is even worse. As you will need millions of joules of energy to fire it, something your engine cannot do.

Capacitors STORE energy. If you use it it takes 5 tau to recharge. Your time would be so huge that your charge time would be in hours even if you could fire it.

Hataria your tank is impossible.

It will require much more than he can provide in MT, or even early PMT. Furthermore, the velocity it will achieve is irrelevant, although I guess it will allow you to use a heavier round, although ultimately the weight of the round is constricted by its volume which is restricted by the size of the tank and more importantly, the breech. If my server worked I could provide you with graphs, but >2000m/sec penetration of an APFSDS actually begins to decrease.

This tank will probably be much larger than the T-90, as well.

Eralineta, kindly take yourself to another thread, please. Both me and Hataria are PMT, and thus our tech is a little bit more advanced than the current state of the art. =p

edit: Macabees, Axis Nova does manufacturing of the main gun and associated subsystems, and Hataria produces the rest of the thing. Integration is done in Hataria.

Also I don't see why you're complaining now, I posted this thing on the draftroom some time ago. o_O

The linear gun is powered by a bank of hyper capacitors (high-density capacitors using superconductors to pack in more energy), which is charged using excess power when the main gun isn't firing.

The amount of capacitor and battery power required will be of a larger volume than what the tank can hold. If my server worked I would provide an image of the current battery requirements for the XM291 ETC gun on the Thunderbolt II vehicle (altered XM8) - the entire bustle of the turret is a huge battery. This test was conducted in 2004. The gun is simply unrealistic.

The linear gun is powered by a bank of hyper capacitors (high-density capacitors using superconductors to pack in more energy), which is charged using excess power when the main gun isn't firing. The design was originally meant for the capacitor to be quickly 'topped off' by a support vehicle with a fusion reactor, but it can be charged by anything with the appropriate connectors, even a diesel engine, albiet more slowly.

The anti-infantry panels consist, basically, of many small hexagons of explosives with steel pellets on top. All the tank commander has to do is mash the control for the appropriate section of the hull and whoever is standing in the wrong place gets shredded.

Please fill me in on these ' high-density capacitors' and how 'superconductors' allow you to pack in more energy.

Also...your understanding of the word 'topped off' shows you know nothing about electronics at all. Capacitors RARELY leak like that. If you have that case how many YEARS did you keep it there? A tank would not have this issue at all.

Capacitors function on a system of 5 Tau. You putting a fusion generator across it is impossible. Capacitors function on a clearly AC waveform, but fusion power has to go through the tank and through the circuits. The capacitor will block the flow of DC current, but you need to have some way to get this in as one. Far be it from me to figure out how you even put a fusion reactor on a 'support' vehicle. He is using a disel engine for one, which is archic by the time you would have this technology.

Something tells me you two haven't seriously throught this through. As a support vehicle would never beable to do as what you say right now. Not in the MT/PMT world at least.

The anti-infantry panels consist, basically, of many small hexagons of explosives with steel pellets on top. All the tank commander has to do is mash the control for the appropriate section of the hull and whoever is standing in the wrong place gets shredded.
Ah, I see. I usually think of them as "vehicle mounted Claymores."

I don't know how "confidential" this information might be, but what type of main gun ammunition am I looking at? LRPs? speciality rounds? airbust?

I got two issues that are holding me off of this idea: your anti-infantry panels are certainly a two-sided weapon that could devestate friendly infantry. Also, your anti-infantry weaponry on a whole is slightly lacking.

The amount of capacitor and battery power required will be of a larger volume than what the tank can hold. If my server worked I would provide an image of the current battery requirements for the XM291 ETC gun on the Thunderbolt II vehicle (altered XM8) - the entire bustle of the turret is a huge battery. This test was conducted in 2004. The gun is simply unrealistic.

Exactly.

Axis Nova you have no real understanding of the systems and the simple laws of physics? Caps are pretty annoying to mess with, but allowing more energy into them because of 'super-conductors' is techno-babble that tries to hide the fact all you are doing is ensuring the tank needs to be running a liquid nitrogen (or at least oxygen) cooling system to even receive the power if it could.

Also. Caps take 5 tau to fully charge and discharge. In that span of time you have the same time to charge as you do to discharge. However...the amount of amps behind a simple mag-lev is huge alone, much less turning it into a weapon for near instanteous fire and weapon-usage.

Your ENTIRE circuitry needs at least 000 gauge wire to even BEGIN to hold the amount of energy you want to put through that. Those cables are huge and will not fit in your tank. Even 714kA is not enough amps to make a decent weapon in war. I don't know about you, but when's the last time you had enough amps running through a wire to cover all of New York City all at once? The amount of wire and components is massive because of the heat. Your tank would be larger then a house if you even tired to begin to fit JUST the weapons-potentional force into the gun.

Its simply not possible.

I'm just going to assume that you don't know what you're talking about due to being new, Eralineta, and discount your comments.

Norausa: It's a relative to railguns, so the options are pretty much either slug (for antiarmor), or HE cannister.

Amazonian Beasts: That's why they're manually controlled instead of automatic. Also, the thing is meant to be relatively cheap, easy to manufacture and maintain, and to be used in groups. I wanted to keep things simple.

According to The Future Combat System: Minimizing Risk While Maximizing Capacity, by Col. Brian R. Zahn, to power electromagnetic armor (alone) it would require 5m³+ volume of capacitor bank to power the armor. This is nothing compared to what would be required for an electromagnetic gun. Furthermore, I don't know about these 'ultrahigh energy capacitors', or whatever you call them, but the 'next-generation' technology is not a capacitor, but a 'compulsator'. According to the same paper they can theoretically (main word) store 135MJm³, but because of the velocity they have to spin their size and weight has to be constricted.

Finally, it's not just an issue of putting all this in a tank - there is an issue of making space in a tank of this volume and weight!

I suggest you talk to ZMI about superconducting battery stacks, Macabees.

I'm just going to assume that you don't know what you're talking about due to being new, Eralineta, and discount your comments.

Lets take the arrogance down a bit there Axis. While he might be new (or not, maybe he's an alt nation of someone who has been here for a long time),
Eralineta seems to know a lot more than you do on the subject.

Caps take 5 tau

Whats this "tau"? Only references to tau I've ever read about have to do with relativity. :/

I suggest you talk to ZMI about superconducting battery stacks, Macabees.

He would probably support my position - if you want, I can ask him to post in this thread.

Lets take the arrogance down a bit there Axis. While he might be new (or not, maybe he's an alt nation of someone who has been here for a long time),
Eralineta seems to know a lot more than you do on the subject.

I think he does know WAY too Much to be a Civilian,

Eralineta: Are you in The Military?

Whats this "tau"? Only references to tau I've ever read about have to do with relativity. :/

I think it's a measure of capacitance.

I was just wondering why you are using a diesel engine as apposed to a gas turbine. It is much more efficient, and would proved more power.

Whats this "tau"? Only references to tau I've ever read about have to do with relativity. :/

Tau is the greek letter: τ

When referring to time its T. Tau is (or rather delta Tau in this case) is used to describe charge and discharge time for a capacitor.

It functions on a sine wave. This is why I was laughing about 'topping off' a capacitor because at the half way mark you get .707. Which is effective RMS read in all systems, DMMs and other components. When it reality it is far higher.
Caps function on the same principal, but the problem with Axis Nova's usage is that we are not talking little button caps anymore. We are talking huge capacitors that store huge amounts of charge.

Capacitors are used for flash on cameras and they regulate your power supply coming into your computers and all electronic components. The goal of a capacitor though it one or two things. Used in a pulse (cannot be used for Mag-lev as it requires high charge prior to starting and firing) and used for maintaining an even level of power.

When AC rides on DC we have a funny sine wave, capacitors charge and discharge a little bit with each of the frequency. A capacitors goal in this use it to produce a stable (as natural and constantly as possible) amount of voltage running through the circuit. Both of which in this case would be disasterous for a tank who is going to be fed power from a secondary source and clearly cannot support the system at all.

What would happen is when you attempt to fire (assuming you stored it off something else) the sheer amps and voltage spike would go through the system akin to a lightning shock through the powerlines. A massive surge would result. Since you WANT this to happen fuses won't be there to protect ir. All this energy travels through the small and efficent wires of the tank to the gun. Everything heats up as the wire running high amps and high voltage builds LOT of resistance. The smaller the wire the more resistance.

When putting that much through the tank each meter of wire is acting like a resistor. The resistance will produce heat, the wire will melt its casing or weaken. Aluminium/copper will be gone. Other choices are expensive and even worse case. What you have happen is too much energy through the wires. The system will be overloaded and won't take the strain. Your compression of systems and scalability simply denies usage in a tank all together.

The fact of the matter comes down to the wires and the circuitry. Both of which are going to be scaled back immensely past what they can handle. 000 gauge wire I think would be able to take it, but even I am not sure of that. Infact 0000 is rated to take just 250 amps. Though the train one was saying they had 600 Kiloamps. A railgun test performed by the navy had about 700 Kiloamps at max firing for an 8 mega-joule rail gun firing 3.2 kilogram shot.

http://fredericksburg.com/News/Web/2007/012007/0130railgun

Here's the video. Check out all though heavy cables (to split up the amps), but notice that the power supply is not in the protective housing? All the powersupply is off the camera, but those cables are the beginning of what would have to come INTO the tank to power it. (More is needed though, that test was a proof-of-concept, but not actually powerful enough to kill a M1)

If you can find a way to do that, be my guest, but realistically physics are against you. Even if you have all the energy in the world the amount of power and materials will ultimately hold you back on storing and running that energy into a tank safely or at all.

I was just wondering why you are using a diesel engine as apposed to a gas turbine. It is much more efficient, and would proved more power.

Diesels are more gas efficient than gas turbines (although modern gas turbines are more gas efficient than that used on the M1 - such as the LV100, although it was canceled). Gas turbines also produce more heat, supposedly, although according Abrams at War by Michael Green the Abrams has the smallest heat signature out of every modern tank. Alternatively, gas turbines are less noisy - reportedly, on the Abrams the tracks make more noise than the turbine, and produce more horsepower per volume. Nevertheless, in regards to efficiency the diesel is superior, and diesels are getting progressively smaller. I forgot the volume savings on the future 1,800hp Europack, but it was fairly large. The M1A2 improves the fuel efficiency of the gas turbine through the use of two diesel APUs above the fuel tanks, on either side of the engine, but these were removed from the M1A2 SEP. Nevertheless, the SEP includes a space for a future lithium-ion under-armor APU.

I think he does know WAY too Much to be a Civilian,

Eralineta: Are you in The Military?

Either that or he teaches physics

I think he does know WAY too Much to be a Civilian,

Eralineta: Are you in The Military?

No, I am not the military, but I am well-versed in these topics I guess you could say.

As for Farads (Capacitance):

The unit of capacitance is a farad. A 1-farad capacitor can store one coulomb (coo-lomb) of charge at 1 volt. A coulomb is 6.25e18 (6.25 * 10^18, or 6.25 billion billion) electrons. One amp represents a rate of electron flow of 1 coulomb of electrons per second, so a 1-farad capacitor can hold 1 amp-second of electrons at 1 volt.

A 1-farad capacitor would typically be pretty big. It might be as big as a can of tuna or a 1-liter soda bottle, depending on the voltage it can handle. So you typically see capacitors measured in microfarads (millionths of a farad).

To get some perspective on how big a farad is, think about this:

* A typical alkaline AA battery holds about 2.8 amp-hours.
* That means that a AA battery can produce 2.8 amps for an hour at 1.5 volts (about 4.2 watt-hours -- a AA battery can light a 4-watt bulb for a little more than an hour).
* Let's call it 1 volt to make the math easier. To store one AA battery's energy in a capacitor, you would need 3,600 * 2.8 = 10,080 farads to hold it, because an amp-hour is 3,600 amp-seconds.

If it takes something the size of a can of tuna to hold a farad, then 10,080 farads is going to take up a LOT more space than a single AA battery! Obviously, it is impractical to use capacitors to store any significant amount of power unless you do it at a high voltage.

They use high voltage and step the amps down at stations in towns and other places as well. High voltage also has less resistance, but the amount of amps to power your whole house is usually 200 amps on a 115 volt supply. Though your individual breaks might be up to as high as 20 amps. If you go past 20 amps you circuit breaker will blow the fuse and your lights will go out, but it will save your appliances from the fatal draw of amps to power everything.

If you turn on your refrigerator, TV, hairdryer, lights or too much of anything you'll blow (or some people say: pop) a fuse and you'll have to go downstairs to reset it. This gives you an idea of just how much power has to run through this if you want to do Mag-lev. If 200 amps is your WHOLE house, just imagine something that is 3500 houses worth of power all running into a tank for a single shot.

Eral, I think everyone appreciates your efforts to stamp out godmode, especially for newbs (Read: The Super Tank thread). But, I think when this was said:
Both me and Hataria are PMT, and thus our tech is a little bit more advanced than the current state of the art. =p

It gives some flexibility. Who knows, if Axis' tech is, say fifty years more advanced, the terms that don't mean much nowadays might have meaning from where/when he comes from. I mean, it isn't as if the EX tank fires nukular ralegun plazma boms and mounts supa impentrible batl arma. This tank, from us laymen's view, looks to be a decent design with some weaknesses along with its strengths that might be able to be built in the future.

Eral, I think everyone appreciates your efforts to stamp out godmode, especially for newbs (Read: The Super Tank thread). But, I think when this was said:


It gives some flexibility. Who knows, if Axis' tech is, say fifty years more advanced, the terms that don't mean much nowadays might have meaning from where/when he comes from. I mean, it isn't as if the EX tank fires nukular ralegun plazma boms and mounts supa impentrible batl arma. This tank, from us laymen's view, looks to be a decent design with some weaknesses along with its strengths that might be able to be built in the future.

It is still not possible and I doubt it ever will be on that system. The problem with the shot is that is its constant. I do see the double helix push as being a cause for some possible fixing, but unless utilized similar to a laser (a needlessly advanced system) to build power in a confined space I doubt his engine would be able to do it.

I'd still expect some external large power base for it as the sudden system shock of power is crippling where the round wasn't. This is why railgun technology is going to be used by the navy on ships with nuclear engines. They are large enough to store the energy and fire.

Though I've been thinking....there might be a simple side solution for Hateria.. consider this. While using a physically connected secondary power source (like a small trailer) the tank is not one of pure combat offensive, but is instead more of a super artillery piece. The secondary trailer could be just a house-sided generator and energy system on wheels, possibly weighing in at 350 tons or more. From this the tank moves out to the field. Instead of a gas powered engine, use hydrogen fuel cells (easily generation 4 cells in the next 50 years)

The actual round is delivered into the mag-lev system by an equal power system. Then power built up inside the secondary vehicle waits for a signal from the tank to launch. The tank would have the targeting, the ammo and the fuel and all other capabilities, but would serve also as a capacitor as well.

As the charge comes through the tank is not in the circuit at all, and closes its circuit off except to the cannon. Then when the round is fired it leaves the chamber like a rail gun. The truck/support vehicle begins charging as the tank tracks and picks a new target. The tank will also have countermeasures for charges and should be able to use the truck (obviously equipped with some method of point-defense laser at least) to destroy incoming enemy rounds.

The tank would move with the truck onto the battlefield as a commander and artillery piece. I'd change tank to something else as this would have immense range and would literally be used best for far in attacks on an enemy that has retreated deep into their nation. Or could be used for precision attacks from remote locations.

Do to the intense speed and power of a railgun and other technologies having a face-to-face showdown on the battlefield will be rare. It will become similar to the F-22 in the sky, but still obey all the rules of physics and power, but have a manned or unmanned power supply (I'd say nuclear (fusion is safest, but expensive)) that could work as a team of two entities that could function with any other group as needed. If the truck is fusion the output for a charge time should be only in the minutes at most. The fact it is a generator and capacitor would make this thing perfectly fine in that case. Though I must urge the tank is NOT the storehouse.