Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Materials

Anytime I see an aeronautical piece of equipment contacting anything in a movie now, I am going to think, "Oh no! Crack propagation of scratches into catastrophic failure by metal fatigue!"

The exception is Iron Man; I will just continue assuming that his suit doesn't get scratched.

edit: To elucidate- given the same bulk material, surface smoothness increases stress cycles before failure. And this is true with roughness on the scale of angstroms, so visible scratches are huge.


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