Turbolaser impact on armor, what would happen?

[His Divine Shadow]

What would happen? If ISD's have superconductive hulls shouldn't the impact produce a large flare? And in the event a turbolaser penetrates the armor, shouldn't it by then have heated the entire hull causing the whole ship to explode? How does this work with turbolasers punching through say ISD's rather than blowing them up?

[The Original Nex]

Well here's something of an idea: http://www.mcc3d.com/swtech/ISDHTL.mov
Granted we don't know how much shields this ISD had left when it was hit. it seems to have bridge shields as the blast is redirected away from the Bridge impact point and down to the main hull terraces.



I stole this from McC's site, credit to him

[His Divine Shadow]

I know about the incident in ROTJ, but is that would should have happened?
If the shields took alot of the brunt then should the TL be powerfull enough to penetrate and if it was powerfull enough to penetrate won't that mean the whole superconducting hull should be flashing or vaporizing instead of penetrating?

[The Original Nex]

Oh. In that case I'll step aside and let someone with the proper education answer you as I'm sorely unqualified.

[Cykeisme]

I'm not qualified to answer this question, but I'd like to ask if the term "superconducting" is a quantitative or a qualitative one.

If it's the latter, what magnitude of conductivity must a material have to qualify as "superconducting"?

If it's the former, perhaps even its incredible conductive properties are unable to cope with the massive localized spike in temperature at the point of impact.


Additionally, since the question in the original post deals with penetration.. the large amounts of kinetic energy of the turbolaser bolt has might physically be sufficient to punch a rent through the armor and allow some of the thermal energy to bleed into the ship. This might account for some penetrative hits.
Note that I'm assuming that turbolasers have kinetic energy, since HTLs are described to have massive recoil capable of damaging the superstructure of a ship it's mounted on, were the hardpoint not reinforced.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

The entire ship glows red when hit. Is that evidence that a sizable amount of energy is being conducted away from the point of impact?

[McC]

I stole this from McC's site, credit to him

Thief! Brigand!

S'ok.

And that red glow on the hull is questionable. It could be spillage light from the explosion, or it could suggest that the hulls is red-hot. *shrug*

[SCVN 2812]

If the hull armor is conductive then it probably does disperse a portion of an energy weapon impact. It probably can spread a fixed amount of energy across the hull with the rest damaging the impact point. Whatever is left over from being dispersed is what penetrates.

The turbolaser hit to the ISD may have been a particularly bad hit, between the shields and armor just enough of the energy must have been siphoned off that it could penetrate the armor on top but not pass through the other side of the ship. Or it cooked off the fuel silos.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I've always wondered about that shot in RotJ. Do we know if that ship was already baddly damaged? Or is it the case that once shields go, your Screwed.. and if THATS the case, whats the point of Armour?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Or is it the case that once shields go, your Screwed.. and if THATS the case, whats the point of Armour?

Because, while they may not be effective against a teraton HTL blast, they offer protection against weaker shots from smaller ships, as well as torpedoes and bombs from fighters.

In RotS, shots that hit the hulls of Venators cause a much larger area of the hull to explode than the impact point. The shot against the ISD in the Battle of Endor also appears to cause a much larger area to flare up than should be expected by a purely penetrative shot.

Perhaps the conductivity is enough to spread the damage across the hull rather than let it punch through to the innards, unless it's too overpowered.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It could be that the armour is actually a built-up series of superconducting layers which are designed to ablate when overloaded.

[His Divine Shadow]

In the EU I've heard about turbolasers punching right through a ship, according to some, this shouldn't happen.

Except the ISD has a superconducting hull. You can't 'punch through' that with an energy weapon unless you exceed the superconducting temperature, at which point your entire hull is probably glowing and your point of impact is now vaporizing. So instead of boring a neat hole through the ship you have what is for all intents and purposes a nuclear explosion happening in the outer layers of your ship's armor. A high-wattage, low duration laser (A turbolaser, in other words) makes a poor penetrative weapon, simply due to the phyics of how DEWs work.

Also:

Originally Posted by His Divine Shadow
Becuase the asteroid is a single dense object, the ISD is more porous with a hard (though relative to the ship, thin) shell around(and internal bulkheads and such too), I have thought about it and it makes sense that an asteroid will be much easier to vaporize and the ISD would be punched through rather than all energy transfered into the ship.

It'd make sense that it'd penetrate ONE wall, rather than an asteroid, but an entire, mile-long-ship worth of walls? That's crazy talk.

Each time hit hits a wall, the beam/bolt/whatever would be disrupted by vaporizing it and passing through the resulting vapor. The whatever would be disrupted, the focus messed up, and more and more energy transferred into the surrounding material... It'd be doing this hundreds... thousands of times, and between each one, there's more and more space for each consecutive de-focusing (or whatever) to build up.

Besides, it'd be stupid to think that between one wall of an ISD and another, there's less material than exists in a smallish asteroid.

Frankly I do not know how to respond, I do not think the bolt would de-focus, seems false to me but I cannot express it.

What I am hoping is that the people with the knowhow can explain the mechanics here and tell me wheter I am right or wrong.


ALSO, a turbolaser penetrating the hull, how much damage should you expect? Would the whole interior be blown away or would the damage be localized to the area around the beam as it vaporized and explodes the internal structure(possibly all the way through to the other side?) or would the amount of energy transfered into it be so large that the ship explodes?

[Connor MacLeod]

Its going to depend partlyon the rate at which the energy is delivered and how fast it can be spread through the hull. A more sustained beam is going to be easier to disperse.

Its also going to depend on the intensity. A beam weapon of given yield is goign to be harder to affect than the energy of an omnidirectional bomb (assuming the amount of the bomb's energy absorbed by the ship is equivalent to the yield of the beam weapon.) The bomb is (generally) spreading its energy over a much larger surface area.

A more tightly-concentrated beam is goign to have a better time puncturing the hull, and a rapid release of a given quantity of energy has a good chance of damaging the hull (think of focused-yield nuclear explosives against the Acclamators hull.)

Edit: I'm still somewhat generalizing, but another factor I forgot to mention is that to actually inflict damage on the hull, you have to meet the requirements to raise it to a certain temp, melt it, vaporize it, etc..

In other words, you have to inject enough energy to exceed the thermal capacities of the hull, but also do it before the armor can disperse the energy (spread it out over the hull and/or radiate it away.)

[Cykeisme]

Relevant or not, I like how everyone ignored my point about turbolaser beams having a kinetic energy component as well as a thermal one

[Drunk Monkey]

Well since the asteroid in ESB was vaporized shooting the hull of an enemy vessel might have a similar affect I presume and could account for the one ship in ROTJ that was blown to pieces.

[Ender]

Except the ISD has a superconducting hull. You can't 'punch through' that with an energy weapon unless you exceed the superconducting temperature, at which point your entire hull is probably glowing and your point of impact is now vaporizing. So instead of boring a neat hole through the ship you have what is for all intents and purposes a nuclear explosion happening in the outer layers of your ship's armor. A high-wattage, low duration laser (A turbolaser, in other words) makes a poor penetrative weapon, simply due to the phyics of how DEWs work.

However, while extremely fast, a superconductor still will nto diffuse heat instantly. There is therefore a discrete bit of time where it can focus on one spot and burn through. A sufficiently high powered laser could still punch through, but the power would be really high.

Also:

Originally Posted by His Divine Shadow
Becuase the asteroid is a single dense object, the ISD is more porous with a hard (though relative to the ship, thin) shell around(and internal bulkheads and such too), I have thought about it and it makes sense that an asteroid will be much easier to vaporize and the ISD would be punched through rather than all energy transfered into the ship.

It'd make sense that it'd penetrate ONE wall, rather than an asteroid, but an entire, mile-long-ship worth of walls? That's crazy talk.

Each time hit hits a wall, the beam/bolt/whatever would be disrupted by vaporizing it and passing through the resulting vapor. The whatever would be disrupted, the focus messed up, and more and more energy transferred into the surrounding material... It'd be doing this hundreds... thousands of times, and between each one, there's more and more space for each consecutive de-focusing (or whatever) to build up.

Besides, it'd be stupid to think that between one wall of an ISD and another, there's less material than exists in a smallish asteroid.

Frankly I do not know how to respond, I do not think the bolt would de-focus, seems false to me but I cannot express it.

He's treating them like actual lasers, when a number of respects (specifically this one and other observations on cohesion) they ae more similar to particle beams. And particle beams don't have that kind of problem. Point out the bit on the SPHA-T page on SWTC and the underwater setting blaster bolt quote from The Cestus Deception showing that its dependent on a certain variable opaqueness and density for a SW energy weapon to dump its energy into the target. Something as light as plasma and vapor should be insufficient, though in most cases something lke water is.

Be careful thoug, they might try and use that to branch into the cahin reaction territory.

[Ender]

Relevant or not, I like how everyone ignored my point about turbolaser beams having a kinetic energy component as well as a thermal one

Yes, because kinetic energy =/= momentum. Momentum and recoil for a massless energy stream comes from P=u/c. Kinetic energy is KE=.5mv^2, and a massless energy stream would thus lack kinetic energy owing to being massless.

[Cykeisme]

Yes, because kinetic energy =/= momentum. Momentum and recoil for a massless energy stream comes from P=u/c. Kinetic energy is KE=.5mv^2, and a massless energy stream would thus lack kinetic energy owing to being massless.

Ah, okay then.
I'd just erronously extrapolated that since the firing ship experiences a change in momentum, it would be conserved by the target experiencing a change of similar magnitude (unless it deformed the target, in an inelastic collision).

So anyway, turbolasers don't cause any physical damage then?


Btw can you help clarify the terms?
I thought P would be power, u was initial velocity and c was the speed of light, but I guess not in this context

[Ender]

Yes, because kinetic energy =/= momentum. Momentum and recoil for a massless energy stream comes from P=u/c. Kinetic energy is KE=.5mv^2, and a massless energy stream would thus lack kinetic energy owing to being massless.

Ah, okay then.
I'd just erronously extrapolated that since the firing ship experiences a change in momentum, it would be conserved by the target experiencing a change of similar magnitude (unless it deformed the target, in an inelastic collision).

It would, but thats due to momentum, not KE.

So anyway, turbolasers don't cause any physical damage then?

Not as a primary means of inflicting damage. It's a heat transfer, so the targets vaporization will apply significant shock to the remainng structure, and it will have to deal with the overpressure wave created by the thermal bloom of any atmosphere, and a couple other things.

Btw can you help clarify the terms?
I thought P would be power, u was initial velocity and c was the speed of light, but I guess not in this context

P is momentum, u is energy, C is c.

[Knife]

Looks to me like the first shot tagged the shields but below wasn't shielded so alot of the energy went to the aft castle structures. Then there is a second shot that hits durring the flash of the first shot.

It's possible that the first shot took out what was left of the shields and tore up the aromor pretty badly, when the second shot hit, it penetrated and blew the SD up. Looking at the clip again, the ship does explode right when the second shot nails it.

[Cykeisme]

Ah, okay. Thanks Ender.

[Chris OFarrell]

The question is the power.

If you had a sufficently powerful amount of energy delivered over a short enough time, you would punch through the hull at the location by overwhelming the ability of the superconducting material to draw off the energy in that unit of time.

I would expect that if you had a sufficently powerful bolt to instantly shoot through the hull in the kind of way everyone is talking about, said bolt would anihilate everything inside the ship. AKA the ISD in ROTJ.

[Spartan]

Ender wrote:

However, while extremely fast, a superconductor still will nto diffuse heat instantly. There is therefore a discrete bit of time where it can focus on one spot and burn through. A sufficiently high powered laser could still punch through, but the power would be really high.

I would think that the ultimate limit to how fast the heat could be transfered is limited to light speed. I guess it would depend on the thermal conductivity of the armor.

[His Divine Shadow]

He's treating them like actual lasers, when a number of respects (specifically this one and other observations on cohesion) they ae more similar to particle beams. And particle beams don't have that kind of problem. Point out the bit on the SPHA-T page on SWTC and the underwater setting blaster bolt quote from The Cestus Deception showing that its dependent on a certain variable opaqueness and density for a SW energy weapon to dump its energy into the target. Something as light as plasma and vapor should be insufficient, though in most cases something lke water is.

Well even treating it like a laser I think it ought not behave like that.