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Saiphas Cain
Caldari The White Rabbits
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Posted - 2010.05.18 04:53:00 -
[1]
Excerpt from Popular Astrophysics: Volume 1 Issue 1
How it all works: Shielding
Ship shields are a high power electromagnetic field maintained just outside the skin of the vessel. Most people assume that a shield should be a large sphere around the ship but this would be highly inefficient as projecting this field farther from the ships skin is a waste of energy. Most ships have a ôshield projector hullö which is the outer hull that armor is connected to the outside of. The shield, in effect, exists through this shield hull and through the armor that rests on top of it. Ship shielding, like armor, is mostly ablative; meaning it is designed to absorb energy from incoming attacks and lose power rather than flex. This is to prevent damage from passing through prematurely and damaging the hull.
The Drake class Battlecruiser will serve well for statistical examples. The Drakes standard powergrid puts out 850 Megawatts of continuous power for module usage. As different equipment designs rely on various voltage and amperage inputs, which the power system is designed to handle without need for additional adapters, it is more convenient to think of this output in terms of raw power, or Joules. A Joule is a measure of the work required to continuously produce one watt of power for one second. It is convenient to calculate ship power in seconds. Ship capacitor power is measured in Giga Joules, that is, in billions of Joules. Needless to say even a billion Joules is a tremendous amount of power. Shields have a normal connection to the ships powergrid that will slowly charge the shield tank over time up to the maximum the equipment can safely handle. The shield projector components on each ship do have a maximum amount of electromagnetic energy that can handle and safeguards are in place to ensure they are not overloaded which could lead to catastrophic failure.
The shield projector is not so much a single component as a series of directed electromagnets just under the skin of the craft. The electromagnets are set up in an alternating fashion in what is called a Halback Array which projects a strong magnetic field on one side of the magnets and a near zero field on the other. This prevents the magnetic fields from interfering with internal ship functions. Ideally the magnetic field would flow around the ship entirely because spaces between the electromagnets where electromagnetic flux flows into and out of the projectors are holes in the shield. In order to prevent these weak points from being targeted the shields are phased, or rotated, through the shield projector electromagnets so the holes are constantly moving and give the instantaneous illusion of being all encompassing.
As incoming objects and energy impact the shield it will absorb the energy of each impact by dissipating power thus neutralizing the attack. The shield only loses energy because it resists the force, cancelling it out. Many are confused by the near constant recharge time of shields on each craft but I can assure you this does not bend the laws of space and time. When a shield is low on power it takes relatively less power to increase the energy of the field. When a shield bank is nearly full of energy it is far more difficult to force more into it much in the same way as a flat groundcar tire is much easier to force additional air into than one that is nearly to pressure. Next we will examine how individual shield effecting modules work.
There is profit in suffering, but little repeat business. |
Saiphas Cain
Caldari The White Rabbits
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Posted - 2010.05.18 04:59:00 -
[2]
Shield Boosters: Shield boosters are additional electromagnetic coil arrays that are capable of dumping energy directly into an existing shield bank. A shields natural recharge near capacity is much slower than a shield boosters recharge because built in shield chargers are relatively low power compared to shield boosters, and are always coupled to the shields. The existing energy of a shield bank is therefore always pushing back at the shield charger so there is a great deal of energy wasted keeping the flux where itÆs needed. Shield boosters overcome this by being much higher power devices, and by charging a smaller, uncoupled coil to a much higher energy level than the existing shields before coupling the coil to the shields to normalize it. The additional energy flows into the ship shield bank and the booster coil loses power to equal the new level of the ship shield coils. The booster coil, whos magnetic field now equals the ship field power level, is decoupled and overcharged again repeating the cycle. Though some shield boosters achieve more efficient coupling ensuring that more power is transferred remember that shield power is a magnetic field measured in Henrys whereas capacitor power is electric potential measured in Joules. These components do not run ôover unityö even when it appears the booster gives more shield power than it takes in capacitor power.
Shield Flux Coils: Shield flux coils are components that improve the natural recharge rate of shields but reduce the overall field capacity. These coils operate the shield bank at a lower power allowing the built in shield charger to pass power into the field faster. Needless to say these are only useful when a faster recharge is preferable to a larger tank.
Shield Extenders: Shield extenders are additional electromagnetic coils that augment the existing shield projectors allowing more energy to be safely stored in the shield. They essentially give more physical material to the shield projectors to hold and channel additional electromagnetic flux thus ômaking the tank largerö.
Shield Rechargers: Shield rechargers improve the normal rate of shield charge by providing additional interfaces to slowly channel ship power into shields. The built in capacity to charge the shield in the first place comes from integrated shield recharger units. As these built in units are always running at capacity additional rechargers are needed to channel additional energy into the shields. These units are much lower power than shield boosters however and feed directly from the powergrid rather than taking additional power from the capacitor.
Shield Power Relays are similar to Shield Rechargers in how they operate but achieve better transfer rates by also siphoning power that would normally go to the capacitor into the shield bank instead.
Shield Resistance Amplifiers and Shield Hardeners: Shield Hardeners are similar to Shield Resistance amplifiers in that they improve the shields efficiency at absorbing certain types of damage. Shield Hardeners actively monitor incoming damage and adapt the shields to resist using complex computer algorithms and high power components thus achieving higher efficiency than the passive shield resistance amplifiers, but at the cost of additional power directly from the capacitor.
There are four primary damage types ship designers are concerned about but all of them damage ships in the same manner, that is by transferring additional energy to the ship in an unexpected manner. Kinetic weapons represent a mass impacting the ship. Thermal weapons represent damage by heat transfer to the ship. Electromagnetic weapons transfer electromagnetic radiation to the ship. Explosive weapons transfer concussive force to the ship. Though Kinetic and Explosive damage are similar, and Electromagnetic and Thermal damage are similar, each is resisted in different ways.
There is profit in suffering, but little repeat business. |
Saiphas Cain
Caldari The White Rabbits
|
Posted - 2010.05.18 05:07:00 -
[3]
Electromagnetic damage is the easiest for a shield to absorb because a shield itself is electromagnetic energy. This is also why shields have no inherent electromagnetic resistance. EM damage is absorbed on a unit for unit basis and dissipated. EM Shield hardeners examine the frequency and amplitude of the incoming electromagnetic wave and attempt to modulate the shield flux frequency to match it allowing the shield to absorb a portion of the energy rather than opposing it and being neutralized.
Thermal damage attempts to raise the speed at which ship molecules vibrate to the point where their atomic bonds break down. Thermal damage is resisted by spreading the energy over a larger area making cooling easier and keeping the armor and hullÆs atomic bonds intact by keeping the transferred heat under the ships point of thermal breakdown. Shields are better at resisting Thermal damage because it is easier for it to spread the thermal impact over a larger portion of the armor and hull preventing failure of individual components. Thermal damage enough to bring an armor plate to its melting point is only half the amount needed to melt two plates for example. The shield still loses energy to this type of attack as it takes energy to spread the damage.
Kinetic damage represents blunt force trauma attempting to puncture the hull. All kinetic weapons have ferrous components that a shield can physically affect and repel thus removing energy from the attack until the leftover force the projectile has can safely bounce off the armor or hull.Early attempts at using non-metallic projectiles were wrought with failure as even the toughest ceramics tended to shatter or crack under the force of firing from projectile weapons, and non-metallic projectiles do not conduct electricity well enough to be fired from railguns.
Explosive damage comes in a series of compression waves that will crack or shear the armor and hull. This concussive damage is resisted by altering the frequency of the shield to directly counter the concussive force. Because a ships shield is a series of magnetic fields it is constantly pushing and pulling at the ships hull which is designed to take these stresses. By altering the rate the field is rotated about the ship the forces on the hull can easily be neutralized by pulling when the compression wave pushes, and pushing when the compression wave pulls. There is profit in suffering, but little repeat business. |
Captain Gumpo
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Posted - 2010.05.18 18:38:00 -
[4]
im looking forward to reading issue 2!
great read.
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Reicine Ceer
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Posted - 2010.05.18 19:02:00 -
[5]
im looking forward to reading issue 2!
great read! :) "Grammatically, the word 'nothing' is a noun, which suggests that it refers to something." - Wikipedia |
Itak Kaarta
Caldari B.O.O.M
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Posted - 2010.05.19 03:32:00 -
[6]
Edited by: Itak Kaarta on 19/05/2010 03:32:59 Great read. You're quite good at the art of sci-fi handwaving
Couple of suggestions (feel free to disagree, I don't have my degree just yet so I could be wrong):
"Halback array" should be "Halbach array."
At the end of the third paragraph, "instantaneous" should probably either be omitted or changed to "nearly instantaneous" as magnetic fields, especially fields of this size, require time (albeit very little) to change.
EDIT: I can't spell.
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Zitus
NON PROPERO
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Posted - 2010.05.19 16:48:00 -
[7]
great article!
You should definitaly write more of these "How it works" papers. Great insight into how sci fi comes together! ------------------ I'm not sure if my eyes are actually bleeding, or if it's merely my brain bleeding out through my eye sockets, but either way, it hurts to read what you just wrote |
Dirty Deeke
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Posted - 2010.05.24 02:44:00 -
[8]
Edited by: Dirty Deeke on 24/05/2010 02:44:13
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Saiphas Cain
Caldari The White Rabbits
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Posted - 2010.05.24 02:49:00 -
[9]
Thank you all, and good observations on the grammar and spelling. Not sure how I managed to misspell Halbach. There is profit in suffering, but little repeat business. |
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