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Not sure if I would put this on the calc request page or not, just trying to get a baseline until I find good images/video of the feat.
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How much KE is required to cut a tank with a sword so hard it explodes?
- Thread starter Creaturemaster971
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My mistake. It's more that he cuts the tank in half front-to-back, and it explodes after falling in two. So yeah, the sword probably didn't do that at all.
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How much KE would the cut be?
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https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/1155851 - "What AP would you get for slicing a tank in half? And durability from tanking an attack from a tank?"
Verdict is 9-A so yours could be higher
Verdict is 9-A so yours could be higher
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I think it'd be just 9-A. The explosion would probably just be because all vehicles in fiction explode when damaged.
Then again, it was a tank possessed by a demon so idk
Then again, it was a tank possessed by a demon so idk
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If the tank still exploded, it could still be 9-A
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Alright cool. Thanks guys!
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Something with this question doesn't add up. I could try to explain this without use of much math. Unless the sword were to ignite ammunition, the tank won't "explode."
Older tanks used primarily homogeneous steel armor plating and were much weaker by design. The sword would have to be moving at massively hypersonic velocities to deal any noteworthy damage, and even then it would be guranteed to shatter.
Modern tanks use advanced composite armor plating that makes them vastly stronger than RHA constructed tanks. Something like the M1A2C Abrams for this example would be very tricky to decide here. The frontal array alone can withstand up to a meter or more of RHAe KE penetration. If modern DU/Tungsten alloy long rod penetrators traveling at ~1.6-2km/s struggle to deal with this, a sword would make this challenge nigh impossible.
Question the material of the sword. Iron and steel would flow like putty at these kinds of velocities. That's why steel penetrators were phased out early on. Modern APFSDS use specicial elements to acheive greater piercing effects without needing to accelerate it to unrealistic speeds. I can't give a definite number for how fast a sword would need to be moving to score penetration, much less "cutting the tank in half."
A simple calculation gave me about 4.8MJ of energy for average APFSDS. I presume a sword would have to have several times that to completely sever a modern tank in half. Regardless, unless your sword is made of adamantium or some other indestructible element, I don't think you would want to do this. There are far more efficient ways of destroying a tank.
Older tanks used primarily homogeneous steel armor plating and were much weaker by design. The sword would have to be moving at massively hypersonic velocities to deal any noteworthy damage, and even then it would be guranteed to shatter.
Modern tanks use advanced composite armor plating that makes them vastly stronger than RHA constructed tanks. Something like the M1A2C Abrams for this example would be very tricky to decide here. The frontal array alone can withstand up to a meter or more of RHAe KE penetration. If modern DU/Tungsten alloy long rod penetrators traveling at ~1.6-2km/s struggle to deal with this, a sword would make this challenge nigh impossible.
Question the material of the sword. Iron and steel would flow like putty at these kinds of velocities. That's why steel penetrators were phased out early on. Modern APFSDS use specicial elements to acheive greater piercing effects without needing to accelerate it to unrealistic speeds. I can't give a definite number for how fast a sword would need to be moving to score penetration, much less "cutting the tank in half."
A simple calculation gave me about 4.8MJ of energy for average APFSDS. I presume a sword would have to have several times that to completely sever a modern tank in half. Regardless, unless your sword is made of adamantium or some other indestructible element, I don't think you would want to do this. There are far more efficient ways of destroying a tank.
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An ancient, demonic parasite trapped in the form of a katana, so I don't think it corresponds with any specific metalANDROMADA said:
Whatever the case, it comes down to Small Building level and Hypersonic, right?
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Yeah I don't know about the material. I've done a bit of research on tank armor and ammunition so that's all I can give you.Jordanbairdcreaturemaster97 said:
As for the site rating, it could be whatever. A MBT is far more durable than a "small building" so I'm not too certain what you would rate it as. Some have given it a 9-A rating, but I promise you no "extremely large animals" are going to challenge the durability or AP of a tank. So le shrug from me.
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Alright. Thanks for the help!
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You'd need to meet or exceed the violent fragmentation energy requirement for whatever material the tank was made out of, for the entire mass of the tank.
If I had to make a wild ass educated guess? Probably at least city-block level energy. Tanks are fairly tough and beefy mothers after all.
EDIT: Damn, overestimated the violent fragmentation energy in my wild ass "educated" guess.
Rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) has an Brinell hardness of about 655, equal to a tensile strength of about 2210 MPa. The shear strength of steels is approximately 75% that of the tensile strength, making the approximate shear strength 1657.5 MPa. This translates nicely into 1657.5 J/cc.
The M60A3 Patto masses 49.5 tonnes and uses RHA equivalent armor. Given that RHA has a density of 7.84 g/cc, that means the volume of the tank (assuming it is completely made of RHA for simplicity, since determining what fraction of the tank's mass was the armor would be a pain in the ass) is (49500 kg) / (7.84 g/cc) = 6,313,775.51 cc.
(1657.5 J/cc) * (6,313,775.51 cc) = 10.4650829 GJ, Large Building level
Modern MBTs, like the M1 Abrams, would require considerably higher energy to destroy due to having composite armor far superior to RHA, but probably still Large Building level+.
If I had to make a wild ass educated guess? Probably at least city-block level energy. Tanks are fairly tough and beefy mothers after all.
EDIT: Damn, overestimated the violent fragmentation energy in my wild ass "educated" guess.
Rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) has an Brinell hardness of about 655, equal to a tensile strength of about 2210 MPa. The shear strength of steels is approximately 75% that of the tensile strength, making the approximate shear strength 1657.5 MPa. This translates nicely into 1657.5 J/cc.
The M60A3 Patto masses 49.5 tonnes and uses RHA equivalent armor. Given that RHA has a density of 7.84 g/cc, that means the volume of the tank (assuming it is completely made of RHA for simplicity, since determining what fraction of the tank's mass was the armor would be a pain in the ass) is (49500 kg) / (7.84 g/cc) = 6,313,775.51 cc.
(1657.5 J/cc) * (6,313,775.51 cc) = 10.4650829 GJ, Large Building level
Modern MBTs, like the M1 Abrams, would require considerably higher energy to destroy due to having composite armor far superior to RHA, but probably still Large Building level+.
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