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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Jason Spadaro)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Sat Aug 25 14:25:01 2001
Hmmm. Monoweave armor. Actually I was talking with some of my players
one time about this. We had a bizarre idea that it might shred the
slugs that hit it, turning bullets to thin rods. Try pull those out of
someone's meatbod. :)

-Cthulhupunk
Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Steve Collins)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Sat Aug 25 14:45:01 2001
----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Spadaro <cthulhupunk@********.att.net>
To: ShadowRun mailing list submissions <shadowrn@*********.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 2:29 PM
Subject: Mono-Weave


> Hmmm. Monoweave armor. Actually I was talking with some of my players
> one time about this. We had a bizarre idea that it might shred the
> slugs that hit it, turning bullets to thin rods. Try pull those out of
> someone's meatbod. :)
>
> -Cthulhupunk
>
>


No it wouldn't the idea behind monoweave armor is that you could get a weave
so tight that a bullet couldn't seperate the threads to penetrate it. It
would provide no protection from the impact, you'd need padding for that,
however you could have a shirt that other than being outrageously expensive
would be 100% bulletproof and no thicker than a light windbreaker, maybe a
light winter jacket if you add the padding.

However if Monoweave were available in quantities to make armor out of it
that costs less than a couple of million nuyen then the changes to the tech
in outer areas would be so great that the world would change drastically.


Steve
Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Nivek Sregor)
Subject: monoweave
Date: Sun Aug 26 07:10:01 2001
What if you had it weaved throughout inside the armor and not on the top layer? I don't
know how tough monowire is but I would imagine that it would stop another monowire from
slicing you in half. Yet, I would definately agree that it would be very expensive. I
suppose you could make it like nylon but I would imagine that the tighter the weave, the
more expensive. Does this idea sound good?
--

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Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Zixx)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Sun Aug 26 09:05:01 2001
Steve Collins wrote:

> No it wouldn't the idea behind monoweave armor is that you could
> get a weave so tight that a bullet couldn't seperate the threads
> to penetrate it. It would provide no protection from the impact,
> you'd need padding for that, however you could have a shirt that
> other than being outrageously expensive would be 100% bulletproof
> and no thicker than a light windbreaker, maybe a light winter
> jacket if you add the padding.

Hmm....so the bullet would hit the jacket and push it into your body.
Funy. I'd just have to undress to get all the bullets out of by bod.
:)

Zixx
Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 02:00:07 2001
Steve Collins writes:

> No it wouldn't the idea behind monoweave armor is that you could get a weave
> so tight that a bullet couldn't seperate the threads to penetrate it. It
> would provide no protection from the impact, you'd need padding for that,
> however you could have a shirt that other than being outrageously expensive
> would be 100% bulletproof and no thicker than a light windbreaker, maybe a
> light winter jacket if you add the padding.

The thing about monowire is that it's extremely _thin_ (monomolecular, if you
believe the hype ;-)), but not that it's neccessarily extremely _strong_ or
_tough_. Sure, it'll cut through things that are softer than it, providing
you don't try and cut too fast, but that doesn't mean that it will cut
through anything. Conversely, that doesn't mean that it will withstand any
sort of impact or force that's exterted on it. After all, monowire is stored
on _ceramic_ spools, which means that at least it cannot cut through (one
particular type of) ceramic.

OTOH, a defect-less structurally perfect monowire would be much stronger
than an equivalently sized wire of 'normal' material, as you would have to
break the atomic bonds to break the wire (rather than just, say, move
dislocations in a steel wire). But if your monowiere is _monomolecular_ or
even just two or three molecules, it's not going to be very strong even so.

Like Gurth's scapel analogy. It'll cut through many relatively thin, soft
materials, but it won't cut through slightly harder or thicker materials
very well. The force required to cut through thin materials would be less
than the forcer required to break the monowire. Cutting through harder
materials (like ceramics) would require more force than breaking the
monowire, so the monowiere would break first. Cutting through thicker
intermediate material would have to be done at a rate so that the force
required was less than the breaking force fo the monowire - try to go
faster, and you'll break the monowire first.

What this probably means, in my view, is that even if you _could_ weave
monowire (say, using ceramic equipment), then if it got hit by a bullet,
weighing, say, 30 grams, travelling at, say, 300 meters per second, and thus
carrying about 1350 J, then it may well break the monowire. See below for a
calculation for monowire strength.

Zixx writes:

> Actually, monowire is very, very strong. Keep in mind that it's a single
> (or in SR I thinks is a couple of) monecule. So you'd have to seperate the
> monecular bndings, which is not that eays...

For it's _size_ monowire is extremely strong, yes. For their size, perfect
iron whiskers with no surface defects to introduce dislocations (yeah, right
;-)) are _extremely_ strong, too. But if they're only a couple of atomic
layers thick (or only a couple of molecules thick), then they still don't
have much strength. Pretty much all materials are limited in performance by
their _defects_. In theory, if these defects could be eliminated, then the
material would perform at it's intrinsic atomic level. ie, it would break
when it's atomic bonds broke.

Now, lets build a hypothetical monowire out of carbon. There could be other,
better choices, but carbon is probably both a likely candidate (four bonds,
easy to manipulate, already heavily researched), and reasonably strong.
We'll build a simple C=C=C=C=C=C=C=C (ad nausium) molecule, which will be a
very very long chain of carbon molecules that are double bonded to each
other. This is a monomolecular wire.

The bond strength of 1 mole of C=C bonds is 839000 J. But 1 mole of such
bonds contains 6.02 x 10^23 bonds. Thus, each bond actually has a strength
of 1.4 x 10^-18 J. Not much.

Our bullet, above, could break, on impact, 9.7 x 10^20 such bonds. Thus, if
the monowire weave had a bond density of greater than about 10^21 bonds per,
say, square centimeter (about the size of a bullet impact?), then it would
be able to resist the impact.

Carbon has an atomic radius of about 1.5 A. Thus, in 1cm, we can cram
(assuming perfect packing density ;-)) 66.7 million carbon atoms, side by
side. Or, in our case, 66.7 million monowires woven side by side (now _that_
would take some weaving!). So, in a square centimeter, we'd fit 4.4 x 10^15
such carbon bonds (assuming a perfect weave in both x and y directions).
That's about 200,000 times _less_ than we need to stop a bullet from
penetrating.

On the other hand, breaking all those bonds takes a measly 0.006 J of energy
from the bullets massive 1350 J. So by wearing your monoweave jacket, you
managed to reduce the energy of impact by 0.0005%. Wow! :-)

Mind you, these are "back of the envelope" type calculations. ;-) Feel free
to point out glaring errors :-).

Thicker monowires would increase the energy required to break them (there
would be a "z" direction to consider). Also I'm not so sure that a C=C bond
has the same atomic size as a C-C bond (1.5 A), but it would have to be
pretty close, and most certainly wouldn't be 200,000 times out :-). Also,
there may be better choices for monowires than C=C chains.

Actually, a highly complicated polymer with a structure like a buckytube
would probably be the best for a monowire. Sure, it's big compared to our
C=C monowire, by probably 10 or so times, but at this scale 1.5 A isn't
really much less than 15 A or so. But in order to break the wire, you'd need
to break about 60 times the bonds, so it'd be much stronger.

OK, assume a buckytube to be a four way bonded carbon array of about 60
atoms in circumference, and infinitely long. A C-C bond is 348 kJ per mole,
or 5.8 x 10^-19 J per bond. At 60 bonds per tube, we're looking at a tube
breaking energy of 4.5 x 10^-17 J. Weave 7 of these together and we're
looking at 2.5 x 10^-16 J.

These things would be about 15 A across, so 7 of them (in a hexagonal type
woven array) would be about 45 A across.

This is about 200 times stronger than our C=C monowire, but it's also 30
times larger. Still not enough to stop bullets.

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 02:20:05 2001
Damion Milliken writes:

> Carbon has an atomic radius of about 1.5 A. Thus, in 1cm, we can cram
> (assuming perfect packing density ;-)) 66.7 million carbon atoms, side by
> side. Or, in our case, 66.7 million monowires woven side by side (now _that_
> would take some weaving!). So, in a square centimeter, we'd fit 4.4 x 10^15
> such carbon bonds (assuming a perfect weave in both x and y directions).
> That's about 200,000 times _less_ than we need to stop a bullet from
> penetrating.

OTOH, it just occurred to me that if we were to layer 7 million of these
monoweave layers together, we'd have a garment 1mm in thickness, that had 30
times the energy adsorbing capacity than would be needed to adsorb a single
1350 J bullet...

Lets just say a jacket has about 2 square meters of material in it. At 4.4 x
10^15 cm of monowire per square centimeter, that's 8.8 x 10^15 meters of
monowire per layer. For 7 million layers, that's about 6 x 10^22 meters of
monowire. At 2000 nuyen per meters, that's about 10^26 nuyen. Or, in US
terms, a trillion trillion nuyen. That's a lot!

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Steve Collins)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 02:25:03 2001
----- Original Message -----
From: Damion Milliken <dam01@***.edu.au>
To: <shadowrn@*********.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 1:56 AM
Subject: Re: Mono-Weave


> Mind you, these are "back of the envelope" type calculations. ;-) Feel
free
> to point out glaring errors :-).
>


Don't have time to look into your math or look up the various stats of the
materials you mentioned but there is one simple one you forgort to include.
Layers, see it's at least 10'000 layers thick and the strength of each layer
is reinforced be the subsequent layer below. Now the math of such a
calculation is beyond me at this point (too long since I was a physics
major) however from a simple every day example I can easily tear 1 sheet of
paper but 10 stacked on top of each other is quite difficult. It would stand
to reason that while a bullet would easily penetrate a single layer of
monowire whatever material it was made of 10,000 of them would be
problematic (also note that of it were cheap enough or cost was not a factor
there is no reason it could not be 10,000,000 layers thick, it would still
be less than 1/2 CM).

Heck by your own calculations 300 layers of Buckytubes would stop a bullet
cold assuming they didn't get any reinforcing effects from each other. So if
you had a mere 300,000 layers of Buckytube woven monowire and defects in the
manufacturing process made it 10% as effective as you noted you'd endup with
a form of Ablative Armor where the 100th bullet to any 1 spot would finally
penetrate. Assume the final thickness is 10 times that of the Buckytubes
used and it's still thinner than a typical Sweatshirt (approximately 1/3rd
of a CM thick).

This is where Monowire for Armor and similar materials gets it's strength,
the density you are able to make it in.


Steve
Message no. 8
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Eric Wiser)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 12:45:01 2001
Damion Milliken wrote:
<snip>

> What this probably means, in my view, is that even if you _could_ weave
> monowire (say, using ceramic equipment), then if it got hit by a bullet,
> weighing, say, 30 grams, travelling at, say, 300 meters per second, and thus
> carrying about 1350 J, then it may well break the monowire. See below for a
> calculation for monowire strength.

That isn't necessarily true. Kevlar is a lot weaker at the level you are
describing
than a carbon to carbon double bond (Kevlar is NH-C6H4-C=O-C6H4-C=O
repeating where the C6H4 is a cyclohexane), and it will stop a bullet despite
having carbon carbon single bonds (MUCH weaker than the double bond).
Remember, the vest doesn't absorb all of the kinetic energy conveyed by the bullet

- most of the actual force still hits the wearer, it just doesn't penetrate to
cause massive
internal injury. I can't say for sure what exactly is happening here but there is

something else going on.

<snip>

> Now, lets build a hypothetical monowire out of carbon. There could be other,
> better choices, but carbon is probably both a likely candidate (four bonds,
> easy to manipulate, already heavily researched), and reasonably strong.
> We'll build a simple C=C=C=C=C=C=C=C (ad nausium) molecule, which will be a
> very very long chain of carbon molecules that are double bonded to each
> other. This is a monomolecular wire.
>
> The bond strength of 1 mole of C=C bonds is 839000 J. But 1 mole of such
> bonds contains 6.02 x 10^23 bonds. Thus, each bond actually has a strength
> of 1.4 x 10^-18 J. Not much.

How do you figure? Each of the carbon carbon double bonds will have 839 kJ
strength
(assuming your figures). The number of carbon in the line isn't going to change
this
(assuming uniformity in the structure) Think of it as a chain. To break the
chain you have
to use sufficient force to break a single link. Same goes here. Each bond still
has the
strength and the strand as a whole will have the same strength. To break it you
must apply
sufficient force to break the weakest link. If it is in a weave, then each layer
of the weave
adds its strength to the whole.

Like I said, I am not an expert in this field but there is something funny about
the math and
the conclusions that you reach based on stuff that I do know. To get any more
information,
I would have to talk to an actual expert in bullet proof design.

If your second hypothesis is correct, and you use a buckey tube then you are very
wrong.
A buckey tube is a perfect carbon matrix - about the strongest fiber that can be
imagined.
A buckey tube (also known as fulurene)
Message no. 9
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 13:30:01 2001
In article <3B8BC947.8810FC74@****.edu>, Eric Wiser <ewiser@****.edu>
writes
>Damion Milliken wrote:
><snip>
>> The bond strength of 1 mole of C=C bonds is 839000 J. But 1 mole of such
>> bonds contains 6.02 x 10^23 bonds. Thus, each bond actually has a strength
>> of 1.4 x 10^-18 J. Not much.
>
>How do you figure? Each of the carbon carbon double bonds will have 839 kJ
>strength
>(assuming your figures).

No. That bond energy is achieved by 12 grams of carbon, having
602,204,500,000,000,000,000,000 carbon-carbon bonds - it is _not_ the
bond energy of _one_ C=C bond. .

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 10
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 13:55:00 2001
Eric Wiser writes:

> Like I said, I am not an expert in this field but there is something funny
> about the math and the conclusions that you reach based on stuff that I do
> know. To get any more information, I would have to talk to an actual
> expert in bullet proof design.

I wrote up a huge reply to your message, but my dialup connection died (and
I'm used to working from a permanent connection, so I use interactive
sessions - sheesh dialups suck the pu.<bleep> <bleep> <bleep>
<bleepity>
<bleep> <bleeeeeeeeeeeeep>). :-(

What it more or less came down to was:

a) Don't forget the thickness factor. Modern kevlar armour is much thicker
than a 1.4 A :-). Monoweave of this thickness is probably going to be strong
enough to stop an artillery shell.

b) Paul answered that bit.

c) Buckytubes, like C=C chains, are _thin_. Yes, a buckytube is about as
strong as diamond (well, not quite, it's hollow), but you'd need ridiculous
amounts of them to make anything useful from on a macroscopic scale.

d) Yes, I agree, design and many other factors are quite likely nearly as
important than the intrinsic capabilities of the material you make the
armour from. :-)

In summary:

I think that the lengths of monowire required to weave a clothing item out
of would be extremely long (trillions of meters). This alone,
notwithstanding the difficulties of handling the material, would rule out
the idea of making such an item. Let alone the hazard factor of wearing an
article of clothing in which lose threads cut you to the bone. Sure, even if
it would work (which it probably would if sufficiently layered), it'd be
practicably unfeasable in all possible ways, starting with the astronomical
cost that would dwarf even the gross income of all the ten mega corps over a
century.

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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Message no. 11
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Eric Wiser)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 14:15:04 2001
Damion Milliken wrote:

> I wrote up a huge reply to your message, but my dialup connection died (and
> I'm used to working from a permanent connection, so I use interactive
> sessions - sheesh dialups suck the pu.<bleep> <bleep> <bleep>
<bleepity>
> <bleep> <bleeeeeeeeeeeeep>). :-(

OUCH! That sucks.

> What it more or less came down to was:
>
> a) Don't forget the thickness factor. Modern kevlar armour is much thicker
> than a 1.4 A :-). Monoweave of this thickness is probably going to be strong
> enough to stop an artillery shell.
>

True - There is a thickness factor. How much does it contribute though? I can
see it helping with the penetration issue, but how far does a standard round
penetrate into a kevlar vest? Is its increased thickness to help with
absorption of energy or something else. These are just a sampling of the things
I DON'T know about this.

>
>
> c) Buckytubes, like C=C chains, are _thin_. Yes, a buckytube is about as
> strong as diamond (well, not quite, it's hollow), but you'd need ridiculous
> amounts of them to make anything useful from on a macroscopic scale.

Actually fullerenes are MUCH stronger than diamond in certain areas (tensile
strength for example is at ~30 GPa), but yes you would have to have a ton of the
stuff for any real application.

> In summary:
>
> I think that the lengths of monowire required to weave a clothing item out
> of would be extremely long (trillions of meters). This alone,
> notwithstanding the difficulties of handling the material, would rule out
> the idea of making such an item. Let alone the hazard factor of wearing an
> article of clothing in which lose threads cut you to the bone. Sure, even if
> it would work (which it probably would if sufficiently layered), it'd be
> practicably unfeasable in all possible ways, starting with the astronomical
> cost that would dwarf even the gross income of all the ten mega corps over a
> century.
>

Agreed - it would be cost prohibitive. If I remember correctly the total annual
production for the world IRL is about 5 ug. Not something that will happen
anytime soon :)

Eric
Message no. 12
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: Mono-Weave
Date: Tue Aug 28 14:45:01 2001
Eric Wiser writes:

> True - There is a thickness factor. How much does it contribute though?
> I can see it helping with the penetration issue, but how far does a
> standard round penetrate into a kevlar vest? Is its increased thickness to
> help with absorption of energy or something else. These are just a
> sampling of the things I DON'T know about this.

I think that maybe we should stop talking about this. All we're doing (well,
me at least ;-)) is showing our ignorance :-).

> Actually fullerenes are MUCH stronger than diamond in certain areas
> (tensile strength for example is at ~30 GPa), but yes you would have to
> have a ton of the stuff for any real application.

Oh yeah, good point - buckytubes (unlike diamond) are more or less defect
free. 30 GPa? That's _strong_!

> Agreed - it would be cost prohibitive. If I remember correctly the total
> annual production for the world IRL is about 5 ug. Not something that will
> happen anytime soon :)

Just for kicks, I calculated that to make a 2 square meter single layer of 7
hexagonally woven buckytubes (assuming these are 15 A in diameter)
monoweave, it would take enough monoweave to loop around the earth (at the
equator) something like 20 times... If we wanted it to be 1mm thick, it'd
take 200,000 times as much. That's about 0.02 light years, or about 183
light minutes. The earth is only 8 light minutes from the sun, so that's 23
times the distance of the earth from the sun... <grin>

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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