Body Encapsulation

Yes. They could fill it with water. It would never get off the ground, and the passengers would all drown though.

_{Better than a fiery crash I guess.}

It sounds silly, because it is. Any system involving liquid, would add too much weight to a plane. Similarly, it would wreak havoc on fuel consumption in automobiles due to the added weight.

No controversy here.

Bad first round for me!.

I was expecting that swomebody could see that the idea is slly but brilliant.

I remember the silly but wonderful idea of counteracting the effects of an explosion with another explosion. Everybody would try to kill me if I proposed this. But in this case it was the US Army for a very effective tank armor. Impossible problems should be solved by impossible ideas

Take the case of the egg: The capsule to contain it only needs to be millimeters larger. The amount of water is negliguible.

Some times people do not think what they say in detail. Aside from the need to have an habitacle for passengers, most of the steel of a car goes to crash-reinforce this cabin. You could have cars made of cardboard and put all the extra weight in the lifesaving capsules.

But the discussion did not get to the point. How ....... such a capsule could be made in a practical way.

Please notice thet I am not talking about a small advance in safety.

A direct 50 Km/h crash kills you easily. I am talking of surviving 500 Km/h crashes.

No matter the enormous difficulties I was expecting somebody burning a neurone on some possible real solution

chorete.

This not a NEW solution. The uterus and the amniotic liquid make this amazing capsule.

Chorete, is this a passenger restraint system for a full size Duranopter?

I still think that is pretty cool!

I have found that when driving having a substantially larger and heavier built vehicle greatly reduces my chance of injury in any crash with any vehicle or object smaller or less structurally sound than mine!

My philosophy exactly!

Even if he fills his car with water, the impact with my Dodge 2500 4 door diesel pickup will result in a win for me every time.

It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.

Keep 'em coming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woUIWCRRJho&NR=1

This poor little fella was tested, very cruel to the poor little mouse. Hope this is not you chorete experimenting.

Sounds travels even faster at liquid than gas (a sonic boom from impact could kill you instantly) and its incompressible with no damping ability to dessipate or minimize impact(just a direct transfer).

In the second video, I would imagine that the poor gold fish is getting a really bad headache from the sound waves.

In the third, I think the mouse is wishing he was getting crushed under the jar.

I grew up submersed in the idea that Progress was going to bring us to unconceivable levels of well being.

Interesting.

I think maybe he was submersed a little too long.

"I am talking of surviving 500 Km/h crashes"

Why did I think that that a submarine was a submersible?.

Funny-.

chorete

As per post #9 and #6 this is the biggest hurdle to overcome at large speeds with sudden stops causing massive G forces.

The same principle also works for demolition (but with even higher equivalent G forces and with a sudden start rather than stop).

Now, take the case of sudden deceleration or acceleration protection, the main protective method is to absorb the energy rather than transfer it to the occupant. This is the main working principle behind seat belts, vehicle crumple zones, etc.

Now in a crash if you can drop the deceleration rate down low enough and absorb enough of the crash impact then the occupant of (say) a plane crash would be safe, but that is an awful lot of energy to absorb.

Take the example of electronic munitions launched out of artillery pieces at 12,000G or bullet-proof fabrics that can literally stop bullets and save lives. Yes they can handle the sudden acceleration and deceleration, but unlike humans they are not made up of 55-78% water and filled with sensitive organs that move at different rates when stressed.

For aircraft there are a number of issues. NASA did some experiments and the crashes usually take one of three types:

1. CFIT or Controlled Flight into Terrain. The first sign of trouble is when the pilot spots that goat standing in a cloud. The impact force is catastrophic at cruising velocities and there is little occupant protection possible at G forces in excess of 1,000.

2. Hard Landing Scenario. In this scenario the aircraft strikes the ground or runway at a descent rate that is too fast. The killer is the sudden vertical deceleration. Mode of death is spinal collapse, not frontal blunt force.

3. Fire. Many mishaps where the aircraft crash lands without the force of the crash killing the passengers the resulting fire does a nice job.

It is very hard to combat any of these scenarios any better than we already do. Ejection seats are not an option (how do you eject 100s of passengers at the same time without entanglement and how many would survive the 20+ Gs of ejection?), although tests have produced positive results on aircraft parachutes (more later).

The best defense so far is to avoid the issues to begin with. For CFIT the FAA has adopted GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) in all commercial aircraft.

For small private aircraft you can get a ballistic aircraft parachute system (Ballistic Recovery Systems or BRS) that deploys and saves the aircraft, but the pilot must manually engage the system at enough altitude. Stalls or mishaps on approach are still going to be an issue. To date about 30 aircraft have utilized this system for a mishap with a good survival rate.

There have been experiments for larger commercial aircraft, but the size, velocity, and mass of those aircraft present challenges. Most mishaps do not happen mid flight, but upon approach, which limits the value of that system.

OK. This is a childish idea. It came to me by the observation of the enormous protection provided to a chicken by floating in a liquid inside a rigid crust.

I thought that if the crust were made of Titanium, it would be very hard to kill the chicken, except by fire. It is hard to say why Nature did not make the crusts more resistant. May be due to the need for the chicken to break it?

I assumed that though the interior organs are very different they have very similar densities and compressibility. So differential motions due to large accelerations would be small. I assume this to be true up to a maximum G to be found by theory or experimentation. For no reason at all, I guess this G to be pretty high

The typical case of people dead in a long fall, is NOT comparable to our case, because even if there are no apparent injuries the differential motions of the different organs when hitting a flat floor are extremely large.

(The poor fish suffered a sound shock, but nothing compared to an explosion shockwave. He recoverted in seconds).

BTW. If we were fishes the invention would be perfect. We would travel in airplanes inside personal or communal water tanks.

I know that NASA likes this type of ideas.

Somebody from THE Organization around?.

I wonder why there are not too many jokes on trhe subject.

chorete

Most chickens don't go more than 15 MPH so it seems that the analogy of the chicken and the egg wouldn't stand up at 400MPH.

"I wonder why there are not too many jokes on the subject"

A chicken walks into a bar.

The two goats sitting at the bar motion towards the bar tender and then towards the chicken standing in the doorway.

Upon seeing the chicken, the bartender turns beet red and screams "you get the hell out of here, we don't serve no rigid crust to no chickens in this joint".

_{Ok, Ok, I'll sign off and go to the naughty step now}

Thanks for the joke.

Reviewing the explosive tank armor I mentioned, I recall a High School invention.

Imagine a western gunfighter, so fast that he is able to point his gun just to the incoming bullets so as they land harmlessly inside his gun barrel.

This funny idea might be possible now, after 70 years of electronic and control advances. THE perfect armor for a tank or ship. Of course the "gun" barrel should resist the explosive ammo.

This could be called Superactive Armor. it presents several metres of armor to any incoming proyectile.

Another idea for NASA or the USNavy-.Ha.Ha Ha!.

chorete

There is no such thing as "perfect" when it comes to armour.

Best defense is not getting hit in the first place, next best is destroying the ordnance in transit before it hits the target (Israel have some interesting developments in vehicle-mounted point defense systems fast enough to detect a short-range RPG launch and shoot it down before it reaches the vehicle).

Imagine a western gunfighter, so fast that he is able to point his gun just to the incoming bullets so as they land harmlessly inside his gun barrel.

This would damage the barrel and possibly detonate the chambered round, either way ruining the weapon. How about just batting the bullet out of the way with the barrel instead?

I agree that the best defense is not getting hit. So here it goes another High School Invention.

I guess that most young boys in my times dreamed of the Death Ray. Funny that we have it today with the laser guns.

But all these imaginable systems have a serious drawback. The need of aiming a sometimes heavy mechanism.

An explosion propagates through air in roughly spherical waves. Can this Phenomenon be reversed?.

Of course. but you need a lot of small shockwave transmitters. You may have them in a large fleet or in a flock of tanks. but the best results would be attained in ground defensive systems.

By producing short sound pulses in a very large array of emitters, distributed through a large land area, you can concentrate the energy in a very small volume with really deadly efficiency.,

As the aiming is purely electronic, you can hit many targets nearly simultaneously. Probably many hits per second. You'll need a lot of energy: but you Know how stupidly energy is wasted just to kill people.

PS My gunfighter does not use a gun but an explosion resistant tube. Can I call it the iTube?.

PS2. Somebody has mentioned that WWII Germans had a waterfilled G suit. So My invention is not so silly!.

chorete

Now I guess that this is too much for NASA. I worked there in the "Glorious" days of moonlanding but all my friends are dead by now.

The point of a G-suit is to aid in the redistribution of blood in the body. Under high-G loading you want to squeeze the legs and abdomen so as to force more blood out of these areas and toward the brain to prevent G-lock (loss of consciousness).

The water filled suits are replacing the pneumatic suits as the effect is faster than waiting for the "speed jeans" to inflate.

The suit's operational principle and purpose are completely different than what you are needing.

Physiologically, the hill you need to conquer is preventing organs, blood vessels, and supporting tissues from shearing upon impact.

The only way we can do that with our present level of technology is to reduce the attack time of the G load upon crash from a sudden spike to a slower onset and to dissipate the crash energy as much as possible. These are the areas that are getting the most attention by designers and rightfully so.

Frontal crash protection systems are doing a very good job, but we are lacking on side impact protection. Side impacts are the worst for two reasons; one, there is the least amount of energy absorbing material due to the thinness of doors in cars, and two, the human body has a much, much lower organ sheer resistance in the lateral direction. T-bone crashes at intersections have a very high fatality rate.

One thing we can do right now is to simply slow down. Kinetic energy is a function of velocity squared, so slowing down yields geometric gains. However, we don't like doing that and I personally understand that resistance myself. /-)

Chorete, You seem to spend a lot of time contemplating unusual ideas. You are wise to sound off here. This group will give you straight advice even if having a little fun at your expense. I commend you for not giving up. Many inventions have reared their unexpected heads because people like you won't quit. Keep it up.

But please, put a shirt on.

Chorete,

My sentiments exactly!

Never give up!

Regards - KJK

We might get a better model from the woodpecker than the chicken/egg as we read about in Steve's blog here.

Yoon and Park's shock absorbers based on woodpecker physiology can take 6000 g of deceleration force...

Is there any reason this could not be scaled up for crash protection in a vehicle?

The 6 Million Pecker Man?

Dreaming and fun is nice. But, the largest decelerations were experienced in early NASA rail sled experiments: 35g max, and the subiect walked away from it. The germans build water filled G suits for their fighter pilots, capable handling some 12 g with a very fast reaction time. That is how close we come today to the dreams.

You may recall the car filling with rapidly solidified foam in the movie Demolition Man.

Such a system woud have to slap a breathing mask on you before the foam to keep you from suffocating.

The solid foam encapsulation would be nearly the same as being in water in terms of disrtibuting impact, but would also drasticly reduce shock tranzmission. Plus, it woudnt wiegh a ton.

I had a very long response for An-Hero but it has dissappeared suddenly. This happens to me frequently.

I need several hours to recover my breath. Sorry

chorete

No problem. I will look forward to the second edition. ;-)

An-Hero seems to know a lot about these things. But I think that he does not fully understand my point.

Let me explain it with some metaphors.

Assume we have a balloon filled with salt water of a certtain density. Then we put several smaller balloons, filled with water or gellies of the same density, inside.

We join the smaller balloons wtth fragile filaments.

This whole semiliquid assembly stays in equilibrium under the forces of Gravity.

As a matter of fact, increasing or decreasing this Gravity does not affect this equilibrium.

The only difference is that at very high Gs the pressures in the system increases.

But liquid and jellies are very incomprensible and of the same compressibility if they are water-based. So the whole system will contract a little bit maintaining its equilibrium.

If we drop this large balloon from a certain height, we get a dissaster.

But NOT if we enclose the balloon in a very strong and rigid capsule.

When hitting the ground the acceleration forces impose a pressure profile in the liquid equivalent to having suddenly increased the Earth Gravity.

I maintain thet the equilibrium in the system is fully maintained up to very high G levels and nothing breaks or gets under high shear.

A good example is that our blood cells do not separate under Gravity. Unless you centrifuge them to extremely high Gs.

I know that this forum is for discussions and not to do some practical work.

But I seriously propose an experiment with a jar filled with different neutrally floating bodies. Chunks of potatoes, turnips, meat etc, and try the impact experiment to see if they change their possition in space under a heavy shock.

I am too old to play with jars.

PS The hard to understand fact here is that every organ (Small balloon) is stopped NOT by applying a line force to it but by a gently surrounding surge in hydrostatic pressure distribution. A serious problem are the organs not totally liquid filled, but with some air voids, like the lungs.

I propose that the guy inhales some harmless liquid just before the impact. Or completely deplete the lungs by applying a vacuum. Remember that this is just for a fraction of a second.

chorete

Good post. The issue is varying internal densities of organs inside the body cavity.

Sudden acceleration of deceleration will cause shear forces and the victim bleeds out internally with no external obvious injury.

So, your example is correct for balloons in equal density solutions, but the human body is not built that way. Tissues do not have a homogenous density.

Your principal is of course valid, to some extent. It is one that has been toyed with for crash protection. (And one that has been used in Science Olympiad egg drop contests, etc.)

The "very strong and rigid capsule" is not possible to implement in any vehicle system in which transportation efficiency is an issue* (which is essentially all vehicles). The safety cage built into modern automobiles is intended to be a reasonably strong and rigid capsule, such that crash force is dissipated by the deformable structure around that rigid structure. But in practice, the safety cage is not completely rigid, because it cannot be while being light and inexpensive.

As AH points out, side impact protection is especially poor, because there is no side crush space. (This is why my Zing!, a very light vehicle, has 2 feet of crush space on each side, to help "even the score" with larger vehicles. It is also why the Zing! has a stronger and more rigid safety cage, relative to its weight, than a typical car.) But in practice, the safety cage of any car deforms under a high load: how much weight and expense can be put into the safety cage?

In practice, good side impact protection systems keep G loads on passengers below 55G, (just barely survivable, in the test conditions) but in the not-so-good examples (a late 90's T-bird comes to mind) the accelerations can peak at about 100G in the standard side impact test (which is pretty gentle: a 3100 partly-crushable sled moving at 35 mph or so).

If people were built of components of equal density, things would be better, but bone is about 1.7-2.0 times as dense as water. So in 100 g side impact, the bones slice through the rest of the body, and the occupant dies.

But the side impact test is at least an order of magnitude more gentle than a highly rigid plane plowing directly into a relatively rigid side of a mountain. (Whereas, with a deformable plane, at least the occupants in the rear might have some small chance for survival.)

A golf club collides with a golf ball. The instantaneous force can be about 4000 lbs (and I suppose a golf ball weighs 2 oz -- 1/8 lb -- so the acceleration is 32000 g).

(picture from: http://www.golf-simulators.com/physics.htm )

* or if the ability to fly, at all, is an issue. An airplane in which the structure can be considered rigid from a crash protection standpoint (into the side of a mountain) cannot fly.

But I seriously propose an experiment with a jar filled with different neutrally floating bodies. Chunks of potatoes, turnips, meat etc, and try the impact experiment to see if they change their possition in space under a heavy shock.

No need to go beyond the thought experiment: they do not change their position relative to the jar. They do, however experience the same acceleration as the jar. There's the rub. People cannot survive high decelerations.

"Chunks of potatoes, turnips, meat" no more resemble the human body than an egg inside a chicken does.

Inhaling a fluid is absolutely ridiculous as is anticipating a crash and breathing out.

Keep trying.

I am trying to recall my High School Anatomy. When a hunter disembowels a mammal, if he cuts the diaphragm, all the Organs fall down. Lungs hang from trachea, stomach from aesophagus, the heart from the carotids, the liver from the hepatric artery, bladder and kidneys from the uretra and finally all the bowels from the anus.

In my opinion, against most of the accepted knowledge in Biodynamics, all the main organs float hydrostatically inside the main body cavity and are kept in place by tenuous links, aside of being packed according to their own shape.

None of them has the slightest tendency to float more than the others in the interstitial liquids. So I deduce. also against common beliefs, that THEY MUST have the same apparent density.

Most people does not understand the way the acceleration is applied harmlessly to the organs.

Take a delicate organ. The Pancreas, put it inside the Jar with the proper water density so as it floats neutrally.

I bet you cannot rupture it by blows to the jar.

When the Pancreas floats in the liquid against Gravity it is being gently held by pressure differentials all around its exterior surface ( Archimedes).

Being the external liquid of the same density and of very similar compressibility than the pancreas, all these forces cancel out very gently. A sudden increase in the pressure, (That's all the blow can do to the water), has a negligible effect in the Pancreas. It contracts evenly, with no shear forces, by a small amount.

Remember, acceleration DOES NOT kill you, but the application of the decceleration forces to only a part of your body or organs, This creates large shear forces.

The pressure gradients inside the organ (Even being very incompressible) is what prevents the system to reach safely extreme Gs.

A Perfect sphere will slightly take the shape of an Ovoid. This may harm the organ at very high deformations.

Buit in general the system will theoretically work well

Avoid being singleminded. I said Potatoes and turnips to avoid the disgusting scenario of fillig a jar with the organs of some animal, in any order, and see if you can damage or disorganize them with blows to the Jar .

chorete

Organs are generally contained in separate coeloms that divide the internal body into individual cavities.

Your best bet would be to contact either a teaching hospital or university and try to get some research papers on the subject of G loaded crashes and the pathologies incurred.

Once you have an understanding of the pathologies and causes you will be in a position to make a guided attempt at improving crash survival.

Right now with out that data and understanding you are just throwing darts in the dark.

I am sorry to see that we cannot get to an understanding.

If I go to an hospital for data of injuries due to high G crashes, all I will find is accidents NOT using my proposed restraint system. So they will show a lot of ruptures due to high shear. I agree that bones might be a problem that will need further study

I gess the proper thing would be to do highly controlled experiments, to find out if I AM RIGHT OR WRONG. That is a perfectly typical case in Science. I'll use many G sensors and high speed cameras. But I do not have these things.

You know what? I am seriously thinking of proposing this theme to NASA, They used to spend lots of money in things much more stupid than this.

chorete

You wrote, "I am sorry to see that we cannot get to an understanding."

It's probably due to the fact that we may have different ways to go about solving a problem.

As an engineer I tend to take a structured approach to problem solving. The first step for me is to understand the problem.

Crash survival is not a new problem and there have been many, many researchers (some with deep pockets) that have done extensive testing and data collection. I can't see why you wouldn't want to fully leverage that vast trove of information. Most of it is free.

It would give a much better understanding of how the human body works under such stress and help determine how best to protect it.

We understand each other well, I think. You are at least coherent and conversant.

Which is more than I can say for many who engage the forum with a revolutionary idea.

Our difficulty lies in our lack of agreement on how the universe works. You dream about ways it could work, and we try to define the ways it does work.

lyn

When I say that I want to send an unsolicited proposal to NASA, I am being pretty serious.

I have been doing some search and NASA does not fund any foreign Project.

When I was working in JPL(NASA), I never felt the need to become an US Citizen.

So if I want the Project to be approved, I need to make a Joint Venture with some US Citizen.

Would any US Citizen in the FORUM like to be my partner?

It would be a lot of fun doing extremely interesting experiments. And being paid for.

Do not worry; I have been thinking of the real possibilities, and I am sure that NASA would approve this Project. I know well the things they like.

chorete

Enthusiasm is the most essential ingredient in any project.

I learned a long tome ago not to get carried away with an idea till you see what has been done already and what others are doing now. I had an obsession with continuously variable transmissions when I was a teenager; came up with a fantastic idea for a hydraulic system. It was fairy complex, so I was confident that nobody had thought of it before.

A search thru the patents turned up 3 priors going back to the 1950's that were functionally identical.

Crash protection has been and is being worked on by all the car companies, the military and who knows how many other well funded organizations.

A comment on your ideas about the organs being nuetral density - not quite. Just buy some chicken liver and hearts and see if they float. Plus, dont forget we have lungs full of air, gas in our digestive systems and as you mentioned, bones.

It's great that you have enthusiasm, but you have to choose your battles wisely.

Z-man, that was a really good post. I am impressed and I gave you a good answer.

I'd agree with you, except I typoed 'time' as 'tome', so the whole thing is trashed.

Ah, that 's all in the past. ;-)

I'm inclined to give him an OT for not using spell check!

OK, I'll resist the temptation.

But spell check is cheating! What would your second grade teacher say if she caught you using a spell checker? (Just noticed I spelt 'fairy' instead of 'fairly'. Both my errors would have been missed by a spell checker anyway, since they are actual words.)

About the videos, Chorete. How fast do you think the container is moving when it impacts the table?

Probably about 10mph. Consider that its an ordinary glass jar and doesn't break.

Well, the context of the message was good and it was well written. Typos happen from time to time.

A comment on your ideas about the organs being nuetral density - not quite. Just buy some chicken liver and hearts and see if they float. Plus, dont forget we have lungs full of air, gas in our digestive systems and as you mentioned, bones.

You might need to proceed in steps:

First devise a method for deboning people, while leaving them alive and functional. With bones, the system cannot work, except for at low accelerations.

Here is a link to give everyone an idea what we are up against:

120 mph Crash Test

Another issue with fluids that hasn't been discussed is the bow shock effect. Fluids do a wonderful job transmitting shock waves.

Looks like that crash is survivable....If you're a camera securely mounted near the back window!

Check out the 2009 Malibu vs. 59 Bel Aire in the related videos.

I don't feel quite so safe in my 72 New Yorker now.

I could not find that video, but I remember seeing the aftermath of a 18-wheeler rear ending a full-size bulldozer at about 60 to 70 mph.

The 18-wheeler's cab was compressed backward along with the engine such that it was flush with the windshield. I don't know if/how anyone could have survived that.

The bulldozer looked totally unscathed and probably could have been put back into service after a can of Krylon paint from Home Depot.

That highway is known for its deaths. Shortly after that accident a young mother and her infant child were killed by two 18-wheelers.

The young mother was driving in heavy traffic and talking to her mother, who was also driving the same road a mile back. The last thing her mother heard her daughter say was "Hey!" Then the phone went dead. The daughter's mother had a real bad feeling. Turns out she reason to feel bad.

One of the 18-wheelers in front of the daughter changed lanes and did not see the daughter. She tried to brake, but the 18-wheeler behind her struck the car so hard it jammed it into the 18-wheeler in front of her, crushing the car much like the one in the video. Police said that the only way they could identify the car was by one of the hubcaps. Both daughter and child perished in that instant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

Sorry. I see that the links after the video have changed.

That was an amazing demonstration of technology advancement.

Comparing cabin intrusion between the two vehicles was stunning.