NationStates Jolt Archive

I have an armor type. Its called Crystal carbon. Its carbon atoms grown in a superdense crystal matrix. Ideally its supposed to be strong and reflect most weapon types. I'm just looking for idea's for improvements, possible and probable flaws. that sort of thing.

Any help would be appreciated.

Offhand, an all-carbon material will burn really well, if it can be ignited. Even diamonds burn, though it takes a bit of an effort to get them started. Non-flammable and/or insulating coatings will help, of course.

FWIW, there was a fictional material called "bi-phase carbon" in the old wargame Ogre. It was described as being proof against conventional weapons, which was why the forces in that game were all armed w/ tacnukes.

Well by that logic any material will burn because most matter in the universe is carbon based. Its for my new superdreadnought, the first ship of its kind my nation has built, using brand new armor and a few new weapons and defenses. So the armor isnt going to be easily bypassed, that and in space, fire has a tendency not to work.

Despite certain players' opinions to the contrary, the Gameplay forum is NOT the place for OOC RP discussions. They go here, just like all other RP threads.

Moved, Gameplay to II.

Right - the list you're gonna encounter of weapons in space:

- Missiles: Make a big bang. May or may not be armed with nuclear/emp/anitmatter/handwavium warheads. Probably make mincemeat of any armour.
- LASERs: Work by heating the target material to high temperature and vapourising it. Guess what: everything boils at some point. No armour's gonna help you against decently powered LASERs, unless you've got some very good coolant system in your armour.
- KE Projectiles: Railguns/Gauss guns/Relativistic Cannons firing objects at high speed (with the latter at a considerable fraction of the speed of light). You're armour's gonna have to be very good at absorbing the energy of one small projectile which has a few petajoules of energy shoved into that tiny space.
- Plasma guns: Generally a no-no from me, but still nice. You're firing a nice hot lump of plasma gas at your target, so just melting a lovely hole through it. Again, you've got problems.

List conclusion? If you want to have one of these ships being resistant to firepower, you're gonna have to have it being almost entirely solid armour. And even that will eventually be breeched. Think about countermeasure/stealth techniques. Maybe even magnetic shielding (though that would have to be strong enough to repel metal projectiles it'll probably rip your ship apart unless you have some anti-magnetic shielding for your ship.

But don't listen to me: I'm a very poor hand at FT.

Crystal anything is vulnerable to resonant frequency fracture, meaning, if a firing of a cannon resonates with the crystal of your armor, or a series of shots creates the right frequency, or anything else really, your armor will shatter like glass. Just ask Nikola Tesla about it, who threatened to vibrate New York City to dust with a single well placed harmonic charge if he was ever asked to pay taxes again, or the army unit who's marching resonated with the bridge they were crossing, killing them all.

...what?

There's no sound in space, because there's no air.

...Fine, maybe a few erroneous particles floating around, but not enough to make sound. And yes, everything does have a resonant frequency, but I'd imagine armor's would be...loud.

If you mean vibrations as in what the projectile does when it actually hits the armor, not sound waves, it wouldn't really matter - the main focus is the massive amount of energy focused on the small space.

Contrary to popular belief, hardness is not the most important factor in armor design (I'm going to take this from the perspective of tank armor). A while ago, there was an idea of using diamond as armor due to its hardness, but diamonds is also brittle. For example, armors such as high hardness steel (BHN of 400+), although great at 'decapping' projectiles is actually less effective in thicker pieces than armored steel (BHN of approx. 320). Ceramics, OTOH, have a high hardness and are brittle but can easily be encased by steel due to how they're manufactured, which isn't the case for diamonds. Encasement allows the ceramic insert to be fractured, but theoritically a smaller piece of ceramic can put up the same resistance than a single, united piece of ceramic, if the ceramic is encased (it can't move anywhere). Also, ceramic is meant to spread (as oppose to absorb) the energy of the impact over a larger surface area (thus the increase in crater diameter), which is why a backing-plate is important. Diamonds might be used in small spheres, to deflect and inflict yaw on a projectile, but TBH depleted uranium is probably still superior than diamond in this case (and depleted uranium is far more ductile).

Material hardness does not work at all at space-possible impact velocities. The only thing that works is mass.
That means, in simple terms, that a 10cm plates of equally dense beryllium, carbon nanotubes composite, and strawberry jam will have roughly the same resistance to kinetic weapons.

Against particle/lasers/whatever, essentially thermal weapons, only heat capacity before destruction matters, sometimes also reflectivity.



Generally, KE protection is best achieved by Whipple shield.
Heat protection is best achieved by multi-layer highly conductive ablative armour, all in three or more spaced levels. They should include outer sacrificial shell to prevent enemy ships from focusing on the same point for long; middle ablative layer which vapour will dispense the energy; and inner highly conductive absorbing shell.

So what about its possible stealth properties.

And crystal carbon is basically small carbon nanotubes. So as far as i can tell so far all i need to do is layer the armor.

Good armour shouldn't be homogenous. You'll need a lot of silver, aluminium, water, ceramics. Carbon is only a part of the armor.

Well, so far its crystal carbon on the outside, liquid metal, (a composite of titanium and nickle) backed by ablative plates. The liquid metal is reinfoced with carbon nanotube fibers. making the middle layer not only flexible but has tremendous tinsile strength. The ablative is a last line defense against energy weapons, the second layer is primarily for ballistic defense, and the first layer, the crystal carbon, is to defend from plasma/particle beams.

Hows that sound?

To be realistic, tensile strength doesn't really work in space armour. It doesn't even work well in tank armour: DU, for instance, is a very weak material.

Ablative always works best as outer and middle layers. The outside layer will always be damaged, no matter how good, but ablation provides extra protection. However, it doesn't have to be thick. What's important is reflectivity, and for that, best variant is silver against lasers and nanotube reinforced ceramics against other stuff. That would combine protection against everything.

Then it should be spaced - just plain space left, filled only with spaceframe.

Middle layer would be thick, and it should both ablate and conduct heat. And in itself would be multi-layer: silver, ceramics, water, ceramics, metal matrix carbon nanotube reinforced composite. Water helps because it's the best heat absorber.

Then spacing again, but this time a Whipple Shield - tens of thin layers with space in between.

Inner layer is the hull itself, it must absorb whatever managed to get through. So it needs nanotubes for heat conduction and metal, perhaps aluminium, to evaporate when conduction can't take the heat.

umm. aluminum produces a very deadly posionous gas when it is vaporized. so using aluminum for any inner layer of armor would be bad.

As for using silver/ablative as outer layers, thats whay my ships are using now.

The liquid metal/nanotube fiber lets the armor maintain tremendous kinetic resistance while still remaining flexible, instead of being compleatly rigid. I figured on having heat absorbing gel with nanites in a layer for damage control and heat circulation to help diffuse energy. As well as being able to become denser at impact points to help blunt kinetic damage.

I know it's a bit hard to imagine, but impact resistance, hardness, even toughness, all mechanical properties - they don't really matter in space armour, except for collisions and other low-speed events. Starting from about 5-10km/s, all materials mechanically behave as fluids, their behaviour determined only by mass.
You can read the same here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervelocity_impact

So you don't need to bother about mechanical properties. Volume and shape is what matters. Soft plastic works as well as diamond.

High-speed space collision is like a drop falling into water, an explosion of sort. However, if instead of just one layer of water there are many layers, only drops from the first reach the second, much slower, then small drops of the second to the third, et cetera.

Space shielding today looks like this:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wstf/images/content/191997main_wstf1099d0595.jpg

A similar thing, but with dozens of thicker layers, can absorb nearly any kinetic projectile, and stop c-fraction ones dead in their tracks.


As for nanite gel, as long as it's water based, but with increased evaporation temperature, it should work fine. Enclosing it between two layers of composite helps to keep it under pressure so it can heat up more (take more heat).

ok, so layer liquid metal a few times with the nanite gel, leave the crystal carbon on the outermost layer or two, and use a layer of something thick and easy to fix on the inner most hull to speed any breaches.

so, Crystal carbon=A, liquid metal=B, nanite gel=C

ACACBCBCBCBCBC-inner hull.

something like that?

I don't really get what liquid metal is. Or more exactly, why make a liquid metal?

The recipe there is good for both the inner hull and the middle armor layer. And also, somewhere you need a Whipple shield. It's tens of maybe 1cm layers of something simple, maybe just metal, to absorb and dispense c-frac projectiles. Not "ACBC...", just metal-nothing-metal-nothing-metal.

A simple example of how effective it is: Modern ATGM pierce 1000mm or steel. Yet they can be stopped by two 200mm spaced plates (400mm total). Or by 100 two-millimetre plates (200mm total). Less doesn't help, though.
Same works well for any kinetic projectiles, multiple layers really disperse their energy.

Much larger spacing (metres) is useful between the hull and middle armour, and between middle main armour and outermost sacrificial shell. It's a good idea to compartmentalize it and use for venting steam when the ship overheats, then condense it back.

Ok then. i'll have a whipple layer under the outer shell, and then the liquid metal/nanite gel layers.

Liquid metal is a nickel/titanium composite materiel that has a molecular structure as liquid. Its more commonly known as memory metal. The style i'm going to use reshapes when it cools, so any warping caused by weapon impacts will essentially fix themselvs a matter of seconds after the impact. Cracks and tears are still a problem, but thats what the nanite repair systems are for.

The compartmentalization i was already planning on. Not sure on the size of the compartments but i know they'll be there and there'll be alot of em.

Overall, i think i'm getting a good idea of the armor and what it'll be composed of.


Hows this sound-

An outer layer of Crystal carbon, carbon nanotubes in a dense crystal fiber matrix. Behind that is a layer of nanite gel to blunt physical blows and circulate to rapidly cool energy impacts. behind that is a layer of 5000 1mm steel plates, spaced 1mm apart, known as a whipple shield. Able to dramatically blunt kinetic weapons even high frac C rounds. Next is sandwiched layers of Liquid metal and nanite gel, 5 layers before another whipple shield layer. Then a gap before the inner hull, which is a layer of duralloy.

Well.... As long as you put it in a more grammatically sound fashion (no offence, but it's important), should work fine.

About the shield, I believe a bit thicker plates would be more effective, perhaps 4mm each, though that's just guessing. Also, add a bit more spacing between them, 8mm would work fine.

As for material, I think you should alternate between very light and heavy materials, i.e. the plates would include both very light lithium-magnesium alloy, and heavier steel.
Mostly light materials, they work best - but when you put a layer of heavy metal behind a few layers of light, it tends to stop their spall, overall working even better.

ok that helps alot. I was thinking about having a whipple shield on each side of the main central layer to help prevent hull breach by kinetics.

So like, every 6 sheets or so have a sheet of steel. and the rest sheets of something softer/lighter like the alloy you mentioned.

I want the armor to be worthy of a Superdreadnought bearing the Ragnarok class designation, but not be wanked to the point of god modding. Its kinda hard to do. =\

...what?

There's no sound in space, because there's no air.

...Fine, maybe a few erroneous particles floating around, but not enough to make sound. And yes, everything does have a resonant frequency, but I'd imagine armor's would be...loud.

If you mean vibrations as in what the projectile does when it actually hits the armor, not sound waves, it wouldn't really matter - the main focus is the massive amount of energy focused on the small space.

/facepalm
There is more to resonance than sound, and there is more to sound than air. The vibrations are carried by the barrels of the guns, their mounting, the housing, the loaders, the firing mechanisms, EVERYTHING that recieves energy from the force of acceleration. It has nothing to do with volume, it has everything to do with pitch. Probably far too high for the human ear to detect, even if it were that kind of sound. its the reason glasses shatter if you run your finger around their rim to make a wineglass instrument. Their frequency is eventually met, then KRACK! Its kinetic waves, not sound waves.

even with resonance you have to find a way to get it across the distance. space is too empty to carry any sort of resonance save for out there tech that would have to harness quantum mechanics and the such.