Wood Types Demonstration

[William the Drake]

The USS Constitution Museum has posted a video on their Facebook page, giving a very small-scale and simple demonstration of wood types and how they absorb and deflect energy. Using 3 blocks of wood (one spruce, one Live Oak, and one Oak) and 3 (what appear to be) ball bearings, the demonstration shows how well each wood type absorbs and deflects the energy from the falling ball bearings.

 

What's interesting is that while the spruce clearly shows that it does not absorb much energy, both the live oak and regular oak perform about the same, with the regular oak appearing to perform better, if only by a little bit. Take a look:

 

Hard, dense wood is desirable in building a ship's ribs. Try our new ball bounce test to see which ball bounces the highest and which type of wood is the hardest.

 

Here is the video

Edited February 17, 2016 by William the Drake

[Tomms123]

Interesting

[NorthernWolves]

 

The entire documentary is good, they compare White Oak and Live Oak with a stress test starting at 10:00 and that transitions to a discussion about stiffness and then they conduct a scaled down (10" mock up hulls with a 4lb cannon) between Oak and Live Oak. 

 

Also http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/4636-timber-types-used-in-ship-construction-request/?p=133296

[BungeeLemming]

I am not sold on the "we scaled down the whole" part.

What cannon are they shooting? A 12pd, 18pd, 24pd comparable shot?

They dont give that info. And they base their conclution on that experiment.

Which is questionable.

 

There is no doubt that USS Constitution was heavily armoured. But surely not as invincible as they say.

[NorthernWolves]

I am not sold on the "we scaled down the whole" part.

What cannon are they shooting? A 12pd, 18pd, 24pd comparable shot?

They dont give that info. And they base their conclution on that experiment.

Which is questionable.

 

There is no doubt that USS Constitution was heavily armoured. But surely not as invincible as they say.

Hey Bungee, yeah no ship is invincible, that's just typical TV talk, was just sharing this for all the newer members who weren't around for all the old discussions.

[Deltrex]

Maybe the test is more to prove that a wooden hull CAN bounce cannonballs rather than prove that live oak hulls are invincible.

172

[Cragger]

The USS Constitution Museum has posted a video on their Facebook page, giving a very small-scale and simple demonstration of wood types and how they absorb and deflect energy. Using 3 blocks of wood (one spruce, one Live Oak, and one Oak) and 3 (what appear to be) ball bearings, the demonstration shows how well each wood type absorbs and deflects the energy from the falling ball bearings.

 

What's interesting is that while the spruce clearly shows that it does not absorb much energy, both the live oak and regular oak perform about the same, with the regular oak appearing to perform better, if only by a little bit. Take a look:

 

 

Here is the video

 

You are not drawing the proper conclusions from the video. The spruce absorbs the most energy hence why the hard steel ball bearing does not rebound much as all. The kinetic energy is being transferred to the wood because the spruce is softer and elastically deforms more then the ball bearing. The live oak piece is in the center and rebounds both the highest and longest. This means that it is harder then the others and the ball bearing is retaining more of its energy in the elastic collision and not transferring it to the wood.