I'm currently writing a "Hard" science fiction story called "Panzer Kreig", and I was wondering if anyone on this board had any knowledge of physics or engineering (even highschool level is handy)?

The story is set about 20 years from now, and the primary weapon of war is something called an Exarm--a sort of mecha/powered armor, made possible by use of perfectly inelastic armor, which draws strength from the surface area of the humanoid frame.


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Edit: Ah...doom lobster on this post. mwahahaha....

Ask me anything you need. I'm a super physics freak and part-time engineer (working on 2 patents at the moment). Also, I've done free consoltation work like this before for dozens of stories and RPG construction.
(Note: If you read this Tozetre, remember me if you need any tech details for the PSDF)

Well, uhhh.. I can't top that...

....But I HAVE read a lot of Larry Niven novels! A Hole in Space, Ringworld Trilogy, Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, etc..

I can understand it all.. I went to school for Computer Enginnering, though.. but never had the chance to finish...
*grumbles about health insurance and lack of money*

Alright...I don't think that this is quite the same as Niven (good author, though.)

Now, one of the big things I've got to work out is inelasticity.

I have two means to acquire (near) perfect inelasticity for armor in this story.

1) several hundred layers of buckyball chain-mail (each "link" is a honeycombed carbon nanotube structure, and there are crossbeams of carbon nanotubes running through each link.) this is over a plate of electrified titanium.

2) electrified crystaline metals. Most likely smelted in near-zero g.

The problem with the first one is that it's not exactly perfectly inelastic. It is, however, mostly organic, and thus capable of being coxed into existence through a bit of genetic engineering. The problem with the second one is the sheer power required to do it.

Crystalized metal can be done without massive ammounts of power...in fact, it HAS been done. A company called Liquid Metal Corp (or something to that effect) created a crystalized titanium alloy that's twice as strong as titanium and doesn't shrink in the mold. That means super exact shaping, like knife edges or super precise sheets that don't need to be modified after the making process. However, Liquid Metal (not really liquid) is still elastic.

To make a material unelastic, it would need to be crystalized. Even the bucky-ball chainmail idea would still bend and possibly stretch. Hmmm...hold on, let me check my chart real quick.
Ok, it appears tripple bonded titanium molecules are possible to make a crystal structure similiar to diamonds. The drawbacks are though that it would be heavy and require a process currently impossible to produce. As in, heating the metal to about 12,000 degrees farenheit, then cooling to below 100 degrees in under 30 seconds while maintaining a pressure of 100,000psi. So, if that's possible in your story, then you could try that. Wait....you already said that. Um...Oh! Here's another process currently impossible...well...possible, but not in amounts large enough to make armor. You could create a carbon isotope and use an electron gun to align the atoms perfectly so that no movement would be possible. It would stack them together and make a very hard, and very unelastic metal. However, given enough force, it would shatter like glass....unless you did the whole nanotube thing (platinum, not carbon) in the right order with just the right electric flow through it. Then it would be unelastic unless enough force was used against it, then it would bend back into place provided none of the nanotubes in that area broke.

Anyways...toss that around, see how you like it.