Aluminum armor?

[strmblsd he/him]

Aluminum is the metal that can stop a shardblade so aluminum armor could be very useful on roshar. What are your thoughts on this?

[alder24]

10 minutes ago, strmblsd said:

Aluminum is the metal that can stop a shardblade so aluminum armor could be very useful on roshar. What are your thoughts on this?

Yes and yes. But it's really hard to get aluminum on Roshar, only by Soulcasting. Till recently there weren't many Soulcasters that would be able to create it so it is really expensive.

However aluminum as a material would be a really bad armor - it is simply too soft and malleabie of a metal to work as an armor. Sure it will stop Shardblade and invested attacks, but the majority of attacks you need to stop are physical blows of steel weapons - aluminum would easily bend, break and crack when hit with steel. 

Historically there were only 80 Shardblades on Roshar, chances that you will meet one in the battle are near zero, chances that you will meet someone with a steel weapon are 100%. Even now with more Shardblade and Surgebinders around, regular soldiers do most of the job.

[strmblsd he/him]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Yes and yes. But it's really hard to get aluminum on Roshar, only by Soulcasting. Till recently there weren't many Soulcasters that would be able to create it so it is really expensive.

However aluminum as a material would be a really bad armor - it is simply too soft and malleabie of a metal to work as an armor. Sure it will stop Shardblade and invested attacks, but the majority of attacks you need to stop are physical blows of steel weapons - aluminum would easily bend, break and crack when hit with steel. 

Historically there were only 80 Shardblades on Roshar, chances that you will meet one in the battle are near zero, chances that you will meet someone with a steel weapon are 100%. Even now with more Shardblade and Surgebinders around, regular soldiers do most of the job.

That is very true. Maybe aluminum steel armor like a layer of each would work. And also very true about the number of shardblades good thought.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

With the recent surge (heh) of people who use Surgebinding, aluminum armor would definitely be useful. It'd stop those with the Surge of Gravitation from pulling a Szeth and flinging you up into the sky. It'd prevent a Soulcaster like Jasnah from turning you into glass. It'd protect you from having your head messed with by one of the Unmade.

I think it would absolutely be useful as armor, just not for physical dangers. You'd need to make a choice between physical protection, magical protection or make a compromise between the two. Steel armour with a thick aluminum coating sounds like a decent protection from most things. Though Shardplate would obviously be the best thanks to the physical enhancements, at least you don't need to refuel aluminum.

[Trusk'our he/him]

16 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

With the recent surge (heh) of people who use Surgebinding, aluminum armor would definitely be useful. It'd stop those with the Surge of Gravitation from pulling a Szeth and flinging you up into the sky. It'd prevent a Soulcaster like Jasnah from turning you into glass. It'd protect you from having your head messed with by one of the Unmade.

I think it would absolutely be useful as armor, just not for physical dangers. You'd need to make a choice between physical protection, magical protection or make a compromise between the two. Steel armour with a thick aluminum coating sounds like a decent protection from most things. Though Shardplate would obviously be the best thanks to the physical enhancements, at least you don't need to refuel aluminum.

I don't know that you'd need to completely remove your physical protection from it. As @strmblsd said, you could just have a coating of aluminum on the outside of your steel armor, or perhaps you integrate smaller portions that would interfere with Investiture but not hamper your physical protection. 

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

The problem with using armor that is solely aluminum is that even if you are guaranteed to face a shardbearer and only them is that you still have to contend with the physical force of the blow. I'm not sure how much the resistance of the aluminum will slow down their swing, but the blade with have a lot of momentum being so big.

That said, a combo of aluminum and a harder metal will be quite effective, as already mentioned by three people.

[alder24]

I don't think aluminum coating is the answer, because you go back to the same problem a full aluminum armor has - it will be damaged, cracked, broken and fell off after every physical strike your armor takes. And you will take a lot of hits before you stumble onto a Surgebinder - they are still quite rare. So your aluminum layer will basically get shredded to pieces before you get to fight with a Surgebinder. Not to mention thicker armor would restrict your movements more and it would be heavier.

A layer on the inside of your armor will be mostly protected from physical blows - but your metal armor will be exposed to Surgebinders - it can be Lashed, Soulcasted or dusted by Division. Aluminum will protect your body, but that's it. And once your outside armor is Soulcasted into smoke, it's back to the soft aluminum susceptible to physical damage - a few hits from a Shardhammer or a Magnified One and the armor is broken.

[Duxredux he/him]

I did a bit of poking around, and yes, there is such a thing as aluminized steel. It takes a bit of work to prep the steel to make sure there are no contaminants or corrosion, but it's used in a lot of places, from furnaces, baking sheets, and in a lot of industrial products. One type uses an aluminum-silicon alloy as the coating and it's very hardy, the other uses pure aluminum, and the process is known as "hot-dipping". 

Now granted the Aluminum coating can have issues due to the different coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE). All materials have a rate of thermal expansion and many of them can vary dramatically. A good example of this is the analog thermostat, which uses the expansion properties of two metals strips welded or riveted together to track temperature. The bi-metal strip (often steel and brass or steel and copper) bends as the ambient temperature changes and this is how analog thermostats operated. Aluminum has a much higher CTE than steel (internet gave me various answers between 2 and 3 times higher) and so the aluminum will expand and possibly peel away depending on how well the steel was prepared prior to hot-dipping. Hot-welding aluminum and steel is very hard, if not impossible. The viability of aluminized steel armor depends on how advanced Roshar's metallurgy is, as I'm iffy on how thick of an aluminum coating can be made without running into issues with thermal expansion properties. It's used in a lot of applications, but I haven't heard of body armor.

So... it depends. Having Hoid show up at Alethkar with a chull cart full of aluminum plates is just the kind of thing for Roshar to get reaaally interested in the properties of Aluminum. Alternately, Hoid could just tell Jasnah to make a bunch while visiting Navani or Dalinar. If it can be made in bulk, then it can be outfitted on the regular troops. We're not just worried about Shardbearers in this war, we'll have to see how it fairs against Regals, Fused, and other Invested arts. If aluminum disrupts Stormform lightning, then at least they can't just fry your platoon at long range. In fact, simple protection from ranged Invested attacks can at least get them close enough to get hit by a sword or spear.

 

Edit: did a bit more poking around and thought about it longer since I was confused how aluminized steel could be used for high temperature applications like baking or car exhausts despite the CTE disparity. I think I figured it out: by dipping cold steel into molten aluminum it will cause the aluminum to rapidly cool. By having the initial temperature of the aluminum be so much higher than the steel, once coated it will essentially shrink wrap itself around the steel as it cools to room temperature which will put the aluminum coating under tension. As temperature rises, the tension reduces as the aluminum expands, but it takes until it gets pretty close to the melting point of aluminum before it will start expanding beyond the original cold dimensions of the original steel. It's really clever, and I think this means that you can let the aluminized steel cool before dipping it again to add additional coatings. This concept is what Mark Rober demonstrated in this 97 second video to protect his ice cream except the lid was sized to the container when it was 1000-1100 F (600 C) hotter than the base. That said, hot dipping was invented IRL in 1836, so who knows if Roshar will figure it out in a timely manner. 

Edited March 15, 2024 by Duxredux
clarity and added thought

[Highprince10 he/him]

On 3/13/2024 at 1:20 PM, alder24 said:

Historically there were only 80 Shardblades on Roshar, chances that you will meet one in the battle are near zero, chances that you will meet someone with a steel weapon are 100%. Even now with more Shardblade and Surgebinders around, regular soldiers do most of the job.

What you could do is have a special force like hazekillers in mistborn and only put men in aluminum so that they can take on a shardbearer. This would make it so not everyone in your army has aluminum but you are ready for a shardblades. 

[alder24]

1 minute ago, Highprince10 said:

What you could do is have a special force like hazekillers in mistborn and only put men in aluminum so that they can take on a shardbearer. This would make it so not everyone in your army has aluminum but you are ready for a shardblades. 

True, but Shardbearers fight in battles, not on roofs at night. You must take into account that a battlefield can span kilometers across, with fighting ranging everywhere. A unit like that will take a considerable amount of time to reach a position struck by a Shardbearer and in that time he can kill hundreds of people, creating an opening for his regular troops to enter and break your formation. And when a Shardbearer would be confronted with an aluminum unit, he isn't alone, he has his personal guard all around him, protecting him from getting flanked and he can simply retreat behind them so they can take care of your aluminum fighters easier then he would be able to. Sure it's a better alternative, but they stand no chance against a Shardbearer, with or without a Shardplate, because of how Shardbearers are used - on a battlefield, surrounded by guards, resting behind frontlines almost as long as they fight.

[Duxredux he/him]

Yeah... there's a bit of a distinction between fighting someone with a Shardblade and a full Shardbearer. The design space for "resists a Shardblade" is waaay different from "resists Shardbearers". We see Dalinar and Adolin throw in punches when enemies try to get close to get within the effective range of a Shardblade and they knock around armored opponents like rag dolls. Adolin threw Kaladin, what, 10 feet in the air when sparring? It would take some adjustment, but a Shardbearer with proper support can handle aluminum plated soldiers just fine.

That said, there's a lot that can happen during that adjustment period. I assume aluminum armor will deform as if had been hit by a typical supernaturally sharp greatsword and will slow down or possibly bind the Shardblade as the soldier dies and falls limp. This is a different failure mode from Halfshards and Shardplate that block then shatter. Many Shardbearers don't swing with their full strength because typically they simply need to keep the blade moving as it slices through armor and flesh like water, and something that only partially resists will introduce an element of surprise that the side expecting it can capitalize on. Again this can be adapted to, but it will slow a Shardbearer with Blade down. They can't just swing at neck height and take out a whole line of soldiers. For partial injuries, a Shardblade is slightly worse than conventional weapons for causing casualties as normal wounds can cause the enemy to bleed out, whereas a Shardblade may just leave dead limbs.

So... it helps, and if/when aluminum equipment is first invented and introduced we may see a few more captured Shards. For a fully aluminum equipped army it reduces someone with only the Blade to someone with just a slightly better sword (assuming weapons can be similarly reinforced). Aluminum-plated soldiers will slightly slow down someone in Plate but still fall like autumn leaves. A Shardbearer using a Shardhammer might not even notice the material change.

For that matter, the corrosion-resistant properties of aluminum may see aluminum-plated equipment in use not primarily for Shardbearers, but simply because of the abnormally high humidity of Roshar. It makes sense that they use spearmen equipped with leather and wood with only a tiny fraction of steel in the spearhead as their main soldier force compared to full steel armor. Depends on where they are with metallurgy and Soulcasting production.

[Chinsukolo]

On 3/13/2024 at 12:20 PM, alder24 said:

Historically there were only 80 Shardblades on Roshar, chances that you will meet one in the battle are near zero, chances that you will meet someone with a steel weapon are 100%. Even now with more Shardblade and Surgebinders around, regular soldiers do most of the job.

80 is a REALLY specific number, and also not the large compared to the implied number of blades in world, and the implied number of dead eyes moving towards a specific location in RoW.

It's also been a long time since i read StormLight (Rhythm of War release)... where did you find such a specific deceleration, i cant recall seeing it for the life of me, is there a WOB out there?

[alder24]

12 hours ago, Chinsukolo said:

80 is a REALLY specific number, and also not the large compared to the implied number of blades in world, and the implied number of dead eyes moving towards a specific location in RoW.

It's also been a long time since i read StormLight (Rhythm of War release)... where did you find such a specific deceleration, i cant recall seeing it for the life of me, is there a WOB out there?

The Feverstone Keep vision, WoK ch 52:

Quote

The scout outside backed his horse up. There looked to be a good two hundred Shardbearers out there. Alethkar owned some twenty Blades, Jah Keved a similar number. If one added up all the rest in the world, there might be enough total to equal the two powerful Vorin kingdoms. That meant, so far as he knew, there were less than a hundred Blades in all of the world. And here he saw two hundred Shardbearers gathered in one army. It was mind-numbing.

Yes, the amount of known blades in the world is at least 3 times lower than the 300 blades (and plates) left at the Feverstone Keep. During the False Desolation there were 2000 Honorspren, all killed by Recreance. There should be hundreds, if not thousands of blades on Roshar of every type of Radiant True Spren. We don't know where they are. Many spren would not have been turned into Shardblades (their bonds were broken when they weren't summoned as blades for example - they remain deadeye in CR), some might have been lost to Highstorms or be buried under crem, but I think there should be hundreds of hidden blades somewhere. I personally believe that Shins have collected many Shardblades to keep them hidden just like Honorblades and their invasions of Roshar were just a cover up to steal Shardblades from the west. 

Spoiler

Jofwu

It seems that deadeyes can wander Shadesmar freely, but when summoned as a Shardblade and subsequently dismissed, they end up at the location in Shadesmar corresponding to the location of the Shardbearer. How does this work for deadeyes who are cared for by a loved one, like Captain Ico?

Brandon Sanderson

They would vanish if their Shardblade were summoned.

Adam Horne

But it's been a while since that's happened, so it's not as much of a concern?

Brandon Sanderson

You can assume that there are more deadeyes wandering Shadesmar whose Shardblades have been lost, than there are ones that the Shardblades are kept. Probably about an equal number, I would say, 50/50. Though I would have to really crunch those numbers. I'd say that across 5000 years-ish... not quite, but you know. That a lot of those weapons, even though they are powerful and things like that, are gonna get lost. Ships are gonna get sunk; things get covered over with crem on Roshar; people go up to cross mountain passes to go attack, and they end up freezing and dying. And I think that over the years, there's been a ton of those that have been lost.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)