SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
ScienceDaily reports:
Researchers have demonstrated a new metal matrix composite that is so light that it can float on water. A boat made of such composites will not sink despite damage to its structure. This first lightweight syntactic foam also holds promise for automotive fuel economy because of its heat resistance. The magnesium alloy matrix composite is reinforced with silicon carbide hollow particles and is strong enough to withstand rigorous conditions faced in the marine environment.
Significant efforts in recent years have focused on developing lightweight polymer matrix composites to replace heavier metal-based components in automobiles and marine vessels. The technology for the new composite is very close to maturation and could be put into prototypes for testing within three years. Amphibious vehicles such as the Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC) being developed by the U.S. Marine Corps can especially benefit from the light weight and high buoyancy offered by the new syntactic foams, the researchers explained.
The unsinkability sounds like a great feature. Perhaps this could be employed on probes to Europa, where weight considerations are even greater than usual?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:39PM
Apparently the author of this sentence is unaware that boats made of wood are capable of sinking. There's more to being "unsinkable" than whether the structural material of the vessel is lighter than water.
In fact, whether the structural material of the boat is lighter than water is sufficiently UNimportant that we make almost all of our boats today out of materials that are heavier than water.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:42PM
Further, a common use for Magnesium is the anode that is sacrificed for anodic corrosion protection. Magnesium structures in sea water might just dissolve? Nice overview here:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/corrosion.html [gsu.edu]
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/corrosion.html#c2 [gsu.edu]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:47PM
There was a proposal around the time the battleships were decommissioned that ground forces still need naval arty support, so a crazy idea was a pycrete iceberg or styrofoam raft maybe 500 feet in diameter pulled into place with tugs or towed behind the aegis cruiser or whatever.
The theory was if you can't absorb torps and missiles the hard, dense way, let them hit. Sure, blow a 25 foot hole in the raft with a mine, as if we care, its a 500 foot disk so you're gonna need only about 19 more direct hits before you get to the arty piece in the center.
Anyway the foams of the day had issues and its not "cool" enough, but a giant foamed aluminum raft covered with army howitzers might be "cool" enough.
The military use of floating islands is interesting.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:19PM
Or this badass plan [diseno-art.com] to make an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:47PM
I think the idea is closer to styrofoam. If you had a boat made of styrofoam and broke it up into pieces, the pieces would still float. You could smash it up into tiny pieces, and those too would still float. The stuff in the boat, well, that's a different story.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:00PM
There's more to being "unsinkable" than whether the structural material of the vessel is lighter than water.
Actually, there really isn't. If the mass of the water displaced by the vessel is greater that the mass of the ship itself, it floats. Heavier that water hulls increase displacement due to their shape creating a void. However, if this void fills it will sink. If the material is lighter than water to start with it cannot sink unless additional mass is added.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:21PM
A ship made of styrofoam is full of coal. A hole appears in the styrofoam. What happens?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:40PM
If I tie an anvil to a chunk of styrofoam would you say styrofome doesn't float?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:49PM
No, but I'd say it doesn't work as a boat.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:08PM
Depends on the shape of the styrofoam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:22PM
Oh, you mean like a useful payload?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:04PM
Imagine a ship made of lighter-than-water material (even with no heavy cargo) in motion across the sea. Then imagine a large hole being ripped in the hull of said ship.
The individual pieces of the material that makes up the ship will not sink (absent some additional weight). Whether those pieces will remain attached to each other in the shape of a ship is very much an open question.
Water is both incompressible and carries a massive amount of momentum, which will be imparted to whatever surface the water hits. Weight within the ship can shift suddenly and severely. Weight distribution (either water or cargo) can lift huge sections of the ship out of the water if the ship floods asymmetrically, and gravity can snap those sections off from the rest of the ship.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dunbal on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:23PM
Exactly what I was going to post, except more along the lines of "wanna bet?". The author needs to revisit Archimedes' principle if he thinks that boats float because of any buoyant property of the material they are made of. Fine, all the little bits and pieces of bulkhead that break off will float to the surface. But the ship (and more importantly its cargo and crew) will be firmly on the bottom of the ocean.
(Score: 1) by calzone on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:59PM
It would be interesting if, for the sake of saving lives, a boat such as this could be "torn apart" when it was sinking. This would cause the cargo to fall out and sink, while the boat remains floated in the water, within reach of passengers to use as flotation devices.
Maybe some kind of pre-fractured hull with linked explosive charges throughout.
Time to leave Soylent News [soylentnews.org]