Competition: Tank Design 2239

[LostCosmonaut]

On 9/3/2018 at 7:21 AM, Zadlo said:

 

What about aluminium, Doron and enamel?

And what about using bolts to make spaced armor?

 

Aluminum is available and can be worked in numerous ways, feel free to make an aluminum hulled tank.

As far as enamels and doron go (I initially assumed that was a misspelling of boron before looking it up), nylon and other synthetics from the late 40s are available. I also don't see a problem with using bolts to get standoff for armor plates.

[ApplesauceBandit]

Since we've got an arms race, my tank has been showly shifting more and more towards Not An M41.  Going to improve the suspension.  Gave it a meaner gun and a better shaped turret, but made sure to keep all the comfort.  Turret's gotten pretty fat, may be able to trim some off the back half still.

 

Spoiler

 

 

On second thought, it's entirely possible that I've also just got the turret itself at too large of a scale

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by ApplesauceBandit
beautified bustle

[Toxn]

I'm seriously thinking about entering a 35 tonne tank named after the Ampulicidae...

 

Update:

I remembered that the 8cm PAW 600 (and 10cm PAW 1000) existed. I was originally thinking about the 90mm GIAT F1 as well. Hrmmm. Choices, choices, choices...

[Sturgeon]

4 minutes ago, Toxn said:

I'm seriously thinking about entering a 35 tonne tank named after the Ampulicidae...

 

Glad I could be such an influence!

[Toxn]

58 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Glad I could be such an influence!

The firm of Scavtech has a longstanding rivalry with Lockheed-but-the-clothing-policy-is-now-ripped-biker-leathers (LBCPNRBL).

[Toxn]

So here is what we have so far:

The suspension is supposed to get replaced at some point (with external torsion bars), and the rear hull needs reworking.

Plans to make the hull lower, shorter and thinner failed: I ended up using up all the freed space by putting in those crazy modular armour compartments and ended up haing to make the whole thing longer and taller to fit the driver's vision devices in (the poor bastard still has to enter/exit via the turret or the bottom escape hatch) once I'd lengthened the turret. The turret is currently missing the mantlet and coax.

 

The gun is a smooth-bore 120mm/L35 piece which is limited (for now) to firing modified mortar shells at lower velocities (~600 m/s) ala the 8cm PAW 600. The HEAT shell should be able to do ~240mm of penetration even with crappy WW2-era HEAT designs thanks to the lack of spin. The turret actually has 4 crew members crammed into it - one to act as a dedicated rangefinder operator. I have no idea what the elevation/depression on the gun is, but I plan to mess with the turret until it's -10/+30. The gun is massively overbuilt for what it's currently doing, and should be capable of slinging proper HEAT-FS and APFSDS whenever that comes online. The casing for the shell is about 850mm long, so there's lot's of room to play with.

 

The weight without anything in the armour compartments is about 25t, with all the suspension/transmission components rated for 45t. The armour compartments are designed to cover up to the rear of the turret ring in a 45' arc and attacks directly to the side of the crew compartment. The base armour is pretty much nothing (20mm, 500mm air gap and 10mm front plate) but will keep HMGs and early HEAT rockets out. When fully loaded up with modern NERA, however, this thing should be able to keep modern HEAT weapons and previous-gen APFSDS at bay.

[LostCosmonaut]

Current status of my light tank design, 7.6 tons total;

 

 

Will definitely gain a few more tons from addition of engine, rest of suspension, tracks, etc., but definitely should meet 15 ton target. Armor is 85mm LoS on the upper glacis, and 110mm LoS on the turret front.

[Toxn]

XM16 "Jewel Wasp"

Length: 6.8m (hull), 10.0m (total)

Width: 3.25m

Height: 3.05m

Weight: 27t (minimum combat weight), 45t (maximum combat weight)

Crew: 5 (commander, gunner, assistant gunner, loader, driver)

 

Armour:

• 20mm RHA + 350mm gap +10mm RHA @ 45' (upper hull front)
• 50mm RHA @ 45' (lower hull front)
• 20mm RHA+ 500mm gap +10mm RHA (hull side forward)
• 10mm RHA (hull side rear)
• 10mm RHA (hull rear)
• 20mm RHA (hull roof)
• 15mm RHA (hull floor)
• 20mm RHA + 500mm gap +10mm RHA (turret front)
• 20mm RHA + 500mm gap +10mm RHA (turret side forward)
• 20mm RHA (turret side rear)
• 20mm RHA (turret rear)
• 350mm RHA (mantlet)
• 20mm RHA (turret roof)

Weapons:

• 120mm L/35 cannon:

               - HEAT: 14kg, 600m/s, ~240mm RHA penetration (90’)

               - HE: 16 kg, 600m/s

               - Vertical movement: -8/+15 degrees

• Browning M2 heavy machine gun (turret roof)
• Browning M2 heavy machine gun (coaxial)

 

Engine: 29L 650 HP (485 kW) V12 turbocharged petrol engine (Continental AV1790 derivative)

Power/weight: 10.8-19.4 kW/t tonne

Max speed (road): 50km/h

Max sustained speed (offroad): 30km/h

Range: 200km

Description:

 

Stay tuned

[Sturgeon]

@Toxn, maybe lose the sponsons? Also, can you fit an AVDS1790? It looks like your tank could use the horsepower.

 

[Toxn]

9 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

@Toxn, maybe lose the sponsons? Also, can you fit an AVDS1790? It looks like your tank could use the horsepower.

 

She already has an AV1790 derivative inside, I'm just being conservative with the power output given the era. She's got a better power/weight than a M48 (which she is very dimensionally close to) in any case.

 

The sponsons are essentially air (the hull is actually very slim inside all that padding), so I'm not too worried on that front.

 

Edit: except for the turret. That thing really got chubby and took the tank's overall dimensions with it.

 

This is the current XM16 hull, just to give you an idea of the interior volume.

[Toxn]

Since my XM16 design ended up ballooning dimensionally into something larger than my original XM8, I think I'm also going to roll some of the improvements backwards and see what they look like.

 

Edit:

This is a comparison of the existing XM8 and XM16 versus a T-55 and M48

As an aside: the driver of the XM-16 is basically sitting on the hull floor to shave a few cm off the height.

[Toxn]

Here is the reworked XM8, in the light configuration:

The hull optimisation allowed the weight to stay the same even with slightly thicker turret armour and the extra 10mm of side armour.

[N-L-M]

1 hour ago, Toxn said:

Here is the reworked XM8, in the light configuration:

Just to make sure I'm seeing this right- the commander and gunner sit abreast on either side of the breech, and the loader is behind them, and each has his own hatch?

[Toxn]

8 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

Just to make sure I'm seeing this right- the commander and gunner sit abreast on either side of the breech, and the loader is behind them, and each has his own hatch?

Yup, although some of the hatches are a bit offset from the positions (gunner's is a bit behind, for instance).

 

I refined the placement at some point with seated person models to make sure that there was space for everyone.

 

Anything amiss?

[N-L-M]

No problems, just a moderately unusual arrangement.

One @Collimatrix and I were discussing as possible for heavy tanks a few days ago, with 2 loaders.

[Toxn]

1 minute ago, N-L-M said:

No problems, just a moderately unusual arrangement.

One @Collimatrix and I were discussing as possible for heavy tanks a few days ago, with 2 loaders.

Huh, I would have thought that it would be more common. What's the standard layout?

[N-L-M]

Usually you have the gunner down in front on one side, commander slightly higher and behind him, loader on opposite side.

T-54 turret, with gunner front left, commander rear left, loader right.

Loader usually goes on left, where he can ram rounds into the breech with his dominant (right) arm.

The turret interior opposite the gunner is usually full of ready racks, electronics or hydraulics, all reachable to the loader for operation. The loader needs a lot of room to work, more so than the gunner or commander. In a large turret, particularly with 2 loaders, the joint space behind the gun makes a lot of sense to me, with the gunner and commander in front of the breechface out of the way. This does however require a large turret.

[Toxn]

4 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

Usually you have the gunner down in front on one side, commander slightly higher and behind him, loader on opposite side.

T-54 turret, with gunner front left, commander rear left, loader right.

Loader usually goes on left, where he can ram rounds into the breech with his dominant (right) arm.

The turret interior opposite the gunner is usually full of ready racks, electronics or hydraulics, all reachable to the loader for operation. The loader needs a lot of room to work, more so than the gunner or commander. In a large turret, particularly with 2 loaders, the joint space behind the gun makes a lot of sense to me, with the gunner and commander in front of the breechface out of the way. This does however require a large turret.

Thanks for the explanation - I know a lot about tanks but tend to slip into the bad habit of viewing the crew members in fairly abstract terms. I'm also a leftie, so the loader's placement isn't intuitive to me.

 

My logic in this case was to give the loader space to work in the bustle (most of which is empty), as the (large) commander's hatch needs a side to itself to fit on the turret.

[N-L-M]

10 minutes ago, Toxn said:

I'm also a leftie

Same here. There's just so much equipment designed to be operated by right-handers that I've learned to adapt. But you have to account for the "man" in the man-machine interface, as he's an inseparable component of the system.

[Toxn]

13 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

Same here. There's just so much equipment designed to be operated by right-handers that I've learned to adapt. But you have to account for the "man" in the man-machine interface, as he's an inseparable component of the system.

The designers of the Hetzer disagree  

[N-L-M]

18 minutes ago, Toxn said:

The designers of the Hetzer disagree  

And it was, objectively, not very good.

Coincidence? I think not.

[Lord_James]

6 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

And it was, objectively, not very good.

Coincidence? I think not.

 

BuT TEh HetZ iS dUH BeST ToNk eVAR!!!!! 

 

REEEEEEEEE!!!! 

[Toxn]

 

28 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

And it was, objectively, not very good.

Coincidence? I think not.

Hey, there's more than enough interior volume to fit four people in there. People are essentially fluid, right?

 

More seriously: I do pay attention to crew placement and orientation, but sometimes don't think as much as I should about task-related movement.

[N-L-M]

Fair enough. I suggest watching Nick Moran climb in and around vehicles, gives a nice sense of proportion and movements required by various duties.

 

On this note, one of the least discussed or appreciated aspect of armored vehicles is how you get on and off of them. They're really tall, and usually have very poor footholds and handholds.

The worst offender I have ever experienced was a Centurion BARV. Climbing up on to that thing seemed positively unsafe. And jumping off tanks regularly isn't good for your knees. The Soviet tanks are relatively easy to climb.

[Toxn]

1 minute ago, N-L-M said:

Fair enough. I suggest watching Nick Moran climb in and around vehicles, gives a nice sense of proportion and movements required by various duties.

 

On this note, one of the least discussed or appreciated aspect of armored vehicles is how you get on and off of them. They're really tall, and usually have very poor footholds and handholds.

The worst offender I have ever experienced was a Centurion BARV. Climbing up on to that thing seemed positively unsafe. And jumping off tanks regularly isn't good for your knees. The Soviet tanks are relatively easy to climb.

I watch most of his videos. Still failed to notice the crew layouts, though, so I guess I'm a slow learner.

I suspect sitting in a turret gets you to appreciate the ergonomic issues very quickly.