Durability to tank lava

Is there an accepted minimum level of durability for tanking lava recognized here? I'm asking because a verse I'm working on has sustained submergance in lava as a casual thing and I'm not sure how to get a baseline standing from that. Is swimming in lava noteworthy durability-wise? I know lava can reach 1,200 celsius but not if there's an average release of joules per unit of lava or... yeah.

I'd appreciate any answers to this question. Thanks.

Ok a bit research and calculation. First we have this article. So lava can be between 700┬░C and 1250┬░C. Given that we likely don´t know the heat of the lava lets work with 700┬░C.

Next lets look at this article. So the Emissivity of Lava is between 0.55 and 0.85. I would guess at the given temprature it should be around 0.65 (I skip a mathematical estimation at this point, since I have no idea wether this is linear rise or not).

Next we look at this article. One could do a better estimation if one would know which character it is, but for now I will go with the average of 1.73 m^2.

At last we input all this stats in this calculator. That results in 57182.306177806 J/s.


Now part 2 heat transfer through conduction.

Human Skin is around 3mm thick. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_ski)

It has a thermal conductivity of about 0.209 (http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/research/Thermal.pdf)

Normal skin temperature is about 33┬░C (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AbantyFarzana.shtml)

Now we use this calculator. That gives us 80389.06333333334 J/s.

Now we add that together and get: 137571.36951113934 J/s.


That is all in all Wall Level, so not very impressive. Someone should check if I did everything right before it is applied anywhere.

Ah, I should have specified. This is for Transformers characters. They're robots that are on average 5 meters tall. The intro animation to the second season and the season finale for the first season demonstrate that Transformers are uninjured by lava. Thinking about it an episode in the second season showed that Devastator flew to the Earth's core in seconds. Not sure if that's more impressive or not. Ignoring the speed and gravity involved in that, it wasn't animated to suggest temperature was a factor. But then it was an 80's cartoon.

"Heavy Metal War" 4:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWie6jWsCfs

Season Two intro 0:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdz1oWtYU-0

"The Core" 2:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWie6jWsCfs

Another episode, "Triple Takeover" demonstrated their ability to survive absolute zero as well. Probably not quantifiable though.

This is actually a very relevant question. Lots of people grant characters vastly exaggerated statistics based on resisting some level of heat. The most common misconception is that being submerged in the heat of a star somehow equals being able to resist star-destroying force. Is this a calculation that you would be willing to do as well in a separate blog post DontTalk? We would naturally put in a reference for the result in the Durability page.

@Antvasima: I have created a blog post about it here. It should be checked over by the rest of the calculation group, before it is used. And feel free to point out/correct any error in spelling or grammar.


@Iustitia Prime: How high is their current durability? Because I doubt that this feat would even reach building level.

Thank you. I will check it out.

I think tanking lava is more of a resistance feat than a durability feat.

DontTalk said:

@Iustitia Prime: How high is their current durability? Because I doubt that this feat would even reach building level.

Click to expand...

It can vary, which is why I wanted to get a baseline for cartoon continuity. It also goes without saying that there are higher showings for higher tiers. I thought the lava thing might work since literally all the Decepticons fell into it and were fine. Not many feats off hand involve explosions with explicate TNT equivalence. However the cartoon is full of 80's absudism. The entire cast can survive the pressures of the ocean floor, gravity in the Earth's mantle, being burried under mountain, being hit at ground zero of a volcanic explosion, yadda yadda. Optimus Prime and Megatron have insanely high strength and durability feats exceeding large planet level. Being leaders, however, they shouldn't scale to their troops.