Measuring impact power

[Gaston de Vieuxchamps]

I've done sharps vs mail over my own bare ribs. I woudn't let a really good fighter do that to me for free but with a mediocre fighter swinging I don't think it felt any worse than rattan vs bare chest without the mail. In other words, if you can take the hit with rattan on bare skin and not be incapacitated then I stronglt believe you could to the same in armour vs sharp.

For impact testing I was thinking find some cheap steel bowl-shaped part preferably about 20ga with a big flat lip. Mount it to a board and whack it, then measure how much liquid the deformed dish will hold.

G

[Baron Alcyoneus]

i often refer to the amount of force we do accept as something that would probably work against a naked man. im happy with that although i wish everyone would learn to throw blows with power and stop making excuses that allow them to win with wrist flick shots delivered by super light broom sticks. hitting with real force takes skill and i would rather our sport be one in which only those with skill succeed. but thats just me dreaming a dream.....

regards
logan

I agree, while we claim an armored standard, we would effect "catastrophic failure" on an unarmored man.

[Francisco Lopez de Leon]

Duke Logan: I hear you. If I had my way we'd be fighting at our current power levels with the nylon wasters the WMA guys use, calling what we receive "a stout blow" instead of trying to assume an armour standard which is not realistic to the level of force we're using, and we'd stop destroying our knees by fighting from them... counted blows, people... Like back in the day.

And my brother agrees.

Maybe if I ever make it onto a throne, I'll go mad with power and rewrite some parts of the ABCs....

yeah...

[GenericUnique]

i think you would find that 97% of us dont hit with enough force regularly and that few of us can ever deliver enough force. like your buddy suggested, they wore it for a reason.

i dont think that sca sport combat is trying to simulate real fighting at all. if we did we would only accept very stout blows and very stout thrusts, most of us would be unable to withstand the abuse and those that did wouldnt be able to do it for long. we would also all be wearing more and better armour.

i often refer to the amount of force we do accept as something that would probably work against a naked man. im happy with that although i wish everyone would learn to throw blows with power and stop making excuses that allow them to win with wrist flick shots delivered by super light broom sticks. hitting with real force takes skill and i would rather our sport be one in which only those with skill succeed. but thats just me dreaming a dream.....

regards

Alternatively, it's why medieval fighters concentrated on unarmoured parts of the body, as can be seen in archaeological evidence (i.e. battlefield casualties), accounts of fights and period manuals on how to fight?

To make it like a "real" armoured (to, say 1066 mail standards) fight, you'd be aiming weak (by SCA standards) blows at unarmoured faces, throats, hands, forearms and shins. Which are also the areas both reenactors and other groups prefer not to target, because they're often unarmoured, and always hurt when hit even moderately hard.

If you try to simulate a 16th century armoured combat, you'd bring poleaxes. Or halfsword. And aim for the face/eyes, hands, groin, armpits and inside of elbows with thrusts, and use mordschlag type blows full force at the head, hands and knees. Again, people often prefer not to do this for safety reasons...

Hitting harder wasn't the period answer, and I don't think hitting harder is necessarily the skill to master to win a period combat. Admittedly, making alliances and bringing friends is the most useful. Failing that, grappling, which doesn't appear in your sport at all, followed by the skill of targeting the weak spots in armour - which are usually fouls in any sport version.

[raito]

Anyone hung out the old armoured pig carcass and tried this with sharps?

Caracasses are not a good substitute for living tissue. For just a single example, dead bones are a lot more brittle than living bones.

[dukelogan]

yeah, i never mentioned hitting harder was a sign of skill in period combat. what i said was that in sca sport combat i would like to see the folks that think that lightly tapping people no longer be rewarded for playing tag as it is far too simple to do. what i mean are the rare folks that use little short sticks that are barely 1.25" that throw taps from their wrists and expect success from it. it, in my opinion, is nothing more than a cheap and easy way to "win" and it makes our sport weaker while enhancing nothing.

i prefer firm, stout, blows thrown with intent as they display more skill and mastery at our art as well as adding some slight semblance (at least in the imagination) that we would have been bested by the blow. i have always felt that it is a fighters duty to throw blows his opponent doesnt have to think about. if you have to think about it then its not a good blow, it ruins the flow of the contest, and it opens the door for guilting someone into taking a shot.

had nothing to do with period sword fighting, sorry if i wasnt clear on that.

regards
logan

i think you would find that 97% of us dont hit with enough force regularly and that few of us can ever deliver enough force. like your buddy suggested, they wore it for a reason.

i dont think that sca sport combat is trying to simulate real fighting at all. if we did we would only accept very stout blows and very stout thrusts, most of us would be unable to withstand the abuse and those that did wouldnt be able to do it for long. we would also all be wearing more and better armour.

i often refer to the amount of force we do accept as something that would probably work against a naked man. im happy with that although i wish everyone would learn to throw blows with power and stop making excuses that allow them to win with wrist flick shots delivered by super light broom sticks. hitting with real force takes skill and i would rather our sport be one in which only those with skill succeed. but thats just me dreaming a dream.....

regards

Alternatively, it's why medieval fighters concentrated on unarmoured parts of the body, as can be seen in archaeological evidence (i.e. battlefield casualties), accounts of fights and period manuals on how to fight?

To make it like a "real" armoured (to, say 1066 mail standards) fight, you'd be aiming weak (by SCA standards) blows at unarmoured faces, throats, hands, forearms and shins. Which are also the areas both reenactors and other groups prefer not to target, because they're often unarmoured, and always hurt when hit even moderately hard.

If you try to simulate a 16th century armoured combat, you'd bring poleaxes. Or halfsword. And aim for the face/eyes, hands, groin, armpits and inside of elbows with thrusts, and use mordschlag type blows full force at the head, hands and knees. Again, people often prefer not to do this for safety reasons...

Hitting harder wasn't the period answer, and I don't think hitting harder is necessarily the skill to master to win a period combat. Admittedly, making alliances and bringing friends is the most useful. Failing that, grappling, which doesn't appear in your sport at all, followed by the skill of targeting the weak spots in armour - which are usually fouls in any sport version.

[Thorsteinn Raudskeggr]

Logan,

Where do you live that this is a problem?

Out here we tend to use the Duke Paul idea "Stout blows. Given and received, fairly."

I'm not a power hitter and I use a 1.5"-1.75" stick. Any thinner and it tends not to be counted. If I see a thin stick come out then I tend to think it's attached to a heavy hitter like Duke Flieg, Duke Radnor, Duke Hauoc, Duke Uther, Count Gunther, ETC

Back to your regularly scheduled thread...

-Ivan

[dukelogan]

its not a problem where i live but, rather, in neighboring areas which sometimes see travelers come over and wonder why nobody is noticing their "blows". when i travel i see it about once a year, but only once.

regards
logan

Logan,

Where do you live that this is a problem?

Out here we tend to use the Duke Paul idea "Stout blows. Given and received, fairly."

I'm not a power hitter and I use a 1.5"-1.75" stick. Any thinner and it tends not to be counted. If I see a thin stick come out then I tend to think it's attached to a heavy hitter like Duke Flieg, Duke Radnor, Duke Hauoc, Duke Uther, Count Gunther, ETC

Back to your regularly scheduled thread...

-Ivan

[Damien381]

I'm really interested in the idea of the sealed fire hose and hydraulic pressure gauge. It has the potential to be somewhat inexpensive and easy to build so it could go to lots of places! I'm not sure what the initial results would look like and getting the kinks worked out will take a bit, but that could be lots of fun to screw around with.

[Baron Alcyoneus]

Instead of a pressure gage, why not just leave the top open, and use displacement? Water is cheap.

[sha-ul]

Instead of a pressure gage, why not just leave the top open, and use displacement? Water is cheap.

My thought was to come up with a way to measure impact in PSI, that is something that could be quantified

[Baron Alcyoneus]

You can't quantify 350cc vs 573cc?

[sha-ul]

next time I see you, remind me to describe what I have envisioned

to describe it....

take a large diameter piece of pipe, say 8-12" in diameter3-4' long, set vertacally. it could be steel, or heavy pvc like water main. this could either be suspended from a rope,like a heavy bag, or set on to a portable base much like a pell.
this internal piece would be filled with a know quantity of weight, say 150-200# in sand or lead shot.

arrange around the circumference of this inner pipe lengths of firehose, also vertically oriented. the bottoms of these hoses could either be folded& clipped shut, or connected into some sort of a manifold. the tops would be connected to a manifold that would also encircle the top of the pell connecting all the hoses. this is so that any air could be bled out of the system. for consistent readings, as air compresses much more readily than water. then this would be connected to the gauge with a releasable check valve, so that you could record the peak pressure reading of each strike. ideally this setup could be taken to different events, where an average of different groups & various kingdoms could be quantified. also you could try to measure what different reading you get from various techniques, follow up etc. & hopefully after recording each strike you push a button& reset the apparatus, without having to refill

[Sean Powell]

Sha-ul,

I think I see what you are doing.

You are displacing water by exerting force through a certain distance. The force is generally proportional to the impact area from weapon size and head pressure from water depth so from volume displaced, you can calculate force and distance... but you have now measured work, not pressure and are very far from measuring peak pressure.

Not that a measure of work is a bad thing. It is as useful as measureing momentum. But if I were to grab your test setup in a bear hug and squeeze I could probably squeeze the majority of the water out of the fire-hoses and into the central pipe but since there is no measure of time there is no way to convert force into power.

Another way to think of it: load a 3/4" ball bearing into a paint-ball gun and have someone shoot you with it. It's very rigid and gonna leave one hell of a small focused bruise from the high pressure at impact... but if you shot your water set-up you might see an ounce of water displaced.

There are also some hideous inefficiencies involved if you add flow check valves to keep the water in one half of the test setup until you turn a valve and re-equalize it.

But a good idea none the less!
Sean

[igelkott]

I came up with the following measuring device but never had a chance to try it:

The thing struck would be a flexible bladder filled with water. I originally thought of a simple 2 liter soda bottle, but the fire hose idea would be better. This would have a hose outlet which went to a vertical tube. The vertical would have horizontal outlets at regular intervals which fed into separate jars for measuring. These outlets might have to have small projections into the vertical tube to help redirect some of the water to flow out the outlet, but since I haven't tried it I don't know if these would be needed.

The amount of water collected in each jar would provide a relative profile of the impact for comparisons to other types of impacts.

So imagine a slow but strong pressure on the bladder... this would filll the lowest jar but have no water in the upper jars.

Now a fast strike with no power behind it would have water in many of the jars, but not a lot of water in each one.

A powerful and fast strike would have water in many of the jars and there would be a larger volume in each.

The idea is to provide an objective profile of the relative impacts of various types of weapons used in different manners, ex. unpadded polearms vs padded polearms, CA ammo, ballista bolts, etc.

I don't know if this would be too crude to discern differences, but varying the sizes of the various parts should be able to fine tune the resolution of the measurements.

As I said, I have no idea if this complicated apparatus would actually work or be useful......

Chris

[sha-ul]

Sean, Alcy was talking displacement.
I am talking closed loop.the large central pipe is a chassis for the firehose. the hoses should be arrayed around the circumference so that the impact, if not absorbed by one hose, would be picked up by it's neighbors. you could also measure force of wraps& off direction strikes.

[GenericUnique]

yeah, i never mentioned hitting harder was a sign of skill in period combat. what i said was that in sca sport combat i would like to see the folks that think that lightly tapping people no longer be rewarded for playing tag as it is far too simple to do.

Sorry I misunderstood.

[Sean Powell]

Sean, Alcy was talking displacement.
I am talking closed loop.the large central pipe is a chassis for the firehose. the hoses should be arrayed around the circumference so that the impact, if not absorbed by one hose, would be picked up by it's neighbors. you could also measure force of wraps& off direction strikes.

Ok. Sorry. Went back and reviewed. You were talking about pressure gauges on a closed system, essentially using the fire-hose as a bladder and impacting the bladder to squeeze water into the pressure gauge and the gauge has a follower pin so when the pressure equalizes the follower pin points to maximum pressure right?

There are some technical challenges but I'm interested in where this idea might lead. I'll be back in a little bit.

Sean