Structural strength of durasteel

[Darksider]

so it would make it more difficult for the kinetic impact of an HTL blast to shatter or knock off parts of the ship via momentum transfer, but it wouldn't do fuck all to help out the specific area of the ship's hull that got hit?

[Darth Wong]

What the hell are you talking about? It's probably an invisible truss. A truss is not a form of armour; it just keeps the structure from falling apart under the stress of acceleration. It would not make the ship able to withstand hits. Those are transports, and are probably not expected to survive a direct hit at all.

All you have here is a long cantilever arm with some kind of forcefield truss which is most likely intended to keep it from snapping off when the spacecraft fires its engines.

[Darksider]

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear enough, Engineering isn't my best subject.

What I meant to ask was if these "Tensor fields" would limit or protect against momentum transfered to the ship by an HTL blast by holding the parts of the ship together so the considerable KE wouldn't just shake the ship apart.

[Darth Wong]

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear enough, Engineering isn't my best subject.

What I meant to ask was if these "Tensor fields" would limit or protect against momentum transfered to the ship by an HTL blast by holding the parts of the ship together so the considerable KE wouldn't just shake the ship apart.

I find it extremely unlikely that a small orbit-to-surface transport would be designed to withstand anything beyond small-arms fire. Why are direct hits from HTL blasts even being considered? They would probably vapourize it instantly.

[Darksider]

and the larger ships hulls would probably be reinforced enough that any effect the tensor fields would have would be irrelevant.

Right. Please ignore my pointless speculation about an event that wouldn't occur.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think he's trying to refer to the tensor fields being used help the ship better handle any forces that the impact would handle. That wouldn't, as you say, be any form of "protection" like a shield would - it would simply be helping the structure cope with whatever forces it would be subjected to (IE it wouldn't affect a turbolaser's ability to vaporize the hull of a target.) I would imagine that you could use tensor fields to help a TL turret handle its own recoil (ie not get torn off the ship) so I imagine you could use it to, say, help the shield generators and surrounding structure also hold up against bombardment.

Shielding already has properties of interacting with the hull and enhancing its ability to withstand damange anyways (witness the reflection of blaster bolts off the ground in TPM under the Gungan theatre shield, or the effects on the ground/snow of Hoth in TESB.) and particle shielding is designed to help structures against physical impactors as well IIRC.

[Darksider]

What he said.

I wasn't talking about them acting to repel any of the direct force of the blast, but rather insulating the ship against the momentum imparted by the blast.

I don't recall which thread it was in, I think it was one I posted about fighters, but Wong mentioned that a Turbolaser blast would impart a considerable amount of momentum into it's target. I was just wondering if these "tensor fields" might help the ship to better handle those forces the same way they help it handle the effects of maximum acceleration or the recoil of it's turbolasers.

[Darth Wong]

What he said.

I wasn't talking about them acting to repel any of the direct force of the blast, but rather insulating the ship against the momentum imparted by the blast.

I don't recall which thread it was in, I think it was one I posted about fighters, but Wong mentioned that a Turbolaser blast would impart a considerable amount of momentum into it's target. I was just wondering if these "tensor fields" might help the ship to better handle those forces the same way they help it handle the effects of maximum acceleration or the recoil of it's turbolasers.

A tensor field is going to be a lot like a real truss; it strengthens a cantilever against a force of predetermined direction. That last part is pretty important; collisions are not going to apply those kinds of predictably oriented stresses to the structure.

[erik_t]

I would expect SW stuff, like modern-day aircraft, to be primarily sized due to potential compression (=buckling) loads. Going by the name, we ought not expect tensor fields to help greatly in this respect (note I'm preferring to translate tensor->tension, else they might well BE Trek-style magic structural awesomeness fields).

It's not immediately obvious to me how such a thing would help any ship shape but a Goddard-style rocket with the aft-thrusting engine(s) in the bows. There's no reason to assume durasteel is substantially weaker in tension than in compression.

Frankly, a magical stiffness field would be a lot more useful in the context of spacecraft than would field that strengthens materials in tension. Buckling is a bitch for fairly fine structures as we see (or would expect to see) in ships shaped like SWships.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'll try to post quotes of the stuff on Tensor fields in the ICSses.. hopefully that might provide some illumination.

In the meantime, this is what Curtis had to say about tensor fields:

here

When a starship accelerates, the thrust forces are applied at the engines. If the ship and its contents are to follow the engines, and avoid being torn asunder, then the acceleration must be transmitted throughout the structure, either by its material properties or by intangible “tensor fields” that the ship generates actively [TPM:ICS]. (These are analogous to the “structural integrity fields” postulated in other science-fiction tales.) Tensor fields relieve stress, transmit force faster than solid contact and thereby maintain cohesion.

The technology of inertial compensators is related to that of tensor fields. These interior devices apply forces akin to artificial gravity within the ship. The purpose is to protect the crew, contents and ship structure from the inertial forces due to sublight acceleration. The force field of the inertial compensator is actively varied so that it always counterbalances (and cancels) the acceleration forces with the right magnitude and direction. Space flights at multiple thousands of G become survivable because of these devices. Without inertial compensators, the ship's occupants and many of its delicate components would be reduced to paste. To determine a vessel's sublight mobility, the performance limitations of inertial compensators may be just as important as fuel/power limits of reactors or thrust limits of thruster nozzles.

In order to cancel the inertial forces safely, the controlling mechanism needs to anticipate the direction and magnitude of the ship's acceleration. It also needs to respond nearly instantaneously when external forces are applied (e.g. the blow from a nearby explosion). The former might be achieved by linking the inertial compensators with the control systems of the sublight drives. A command to the ion drives may carry a corresponding instruction to the inertial compensators. Internal sensor feedback from the ion drives may inform the compensators to make adjustments.

However the task of anticipating and actively damping external accelerations is more problematic. There must be a lag time in the response, due to the finite duration of processing and the transmission of control signals to inertial compensators across the ship. Intra-ship signals may be limited to light-speed; in that case the typical lag time is determined by the linear size of the ship.

It seems likely that longer lag times will lead to a larger residual of uncompensated inertial forces. This may limit how rapidly a large starship can change the direction or output of its sublight engines (though not the engine output in peak terms). Fortunately, although we may expect larger ships to be more vulnerable to residual forces due to compensator time-lags, big ships generally benefit from greater mass and more effective shield protection. The abovementioned tensor fields may help too.

Despite the similarity ot "structural integrity fields" he alludes to (I wonder if he knows much about Trek, doubt it), they do seem to be directional, or at least are implied to be in some manner.

Here is another small tidbit:

Vast warships, on the other hand, distribute their energy through broad power trunks. They also have many active and passive heat-disposal systems, e.g. neutrino radiators, which may be unfeasible on fighter scales. A warship's thick cladding of exotic, thermally superconducting hull armour effectively turns the entire surface into a unitary heat sink. Such armour is equally good at dispersing internal waste heat or the heat of a turbolaser hit. Relatively heavy internal supports, both structurally and by tensor-field generators, cope with the recoil of heavier guns that compare to the ship's engine power.

That would also seem to support Mike's idea, if I am reading that (and him) correctly.