Thermo-imaging and Full Body Armor

[glitterboy2098]

as much if not a bit more than a normal person.

not only do you have the person in there metabolizing and sweating and such, but the body armor itself would work as insulation, trapping heat. in enviromental armors, there is a cooling system (mostly likely a water tube garment), but any heat it pulls from the armor and person has to be gotten rid of via heat exchangers, which will stand out brightly in thermal.

so while it should be obvious that a person is wearing body armor from their heat sig, they'll show up on thermal like a normal person.

[glitterboy2098]

as much if not a bit more than a normal person.

not only do you have the person in there metabolizing and sweating and such, but the body armor itself would work as insulation, trapping heat. in enviromental armors, there is a cooling system (mostly likely a water tube garment), but any heat it pulls from the armor and person has to be gotten rid of via heat exchangers, which will stand out brightly in thermal.
so while it should be obvious that a person is wearing body armor from their heat sig, they'll show up on thermal like a normal person.

heat exchangers..like heat sinks? does that pull cool air in because if that is the case then it wouldnt be enviro would it? if heat gets out,then it means things can get in,right?
and i do understand this is case by case because i would also imagine on a freezing day there would be less heat etc...

a heat exchanger is a device that moves heat from one medium to another. in my examples above, the liquid filled tubes in the cooling garment is a type of heat exchanger, since it takes heat from the body (solid) into a circulating fluid (liquid). a second heat exchanger is needed to take the heat from that liquid and transfer it somehwere else, like into the air thorugh a radiator.

the cooling system of a suit of EBA would work not unlike the system in your Refrigerator. you'd have a circulating coolant. in one part you'd have a radiator system to expose that coolant to the outside enviroment. on the other you'd have a system to run the coolant by the heat generating parts (like the body, but also electronics and such). thus heat goes fro mthe point of high energy (that generating the heat) to a point of low energy (the outside), despite the two not being in direct contact.
in this case, while heat can get out, nothing else can get in, since the heat is passing through a sealed system in between.

this same cooling system would probably be employed to cool the air being supplied to the wearer as well (not only in the helmet, but also in the rest uf the suit..helps regulate core temprature and helps with sweat related issues). that air would require extensive filtering if it came from the outside, but air from internal tanks would just need cleaning of Co2 and other gases.

[jedi078]

Quick question..Im GMing a game where my players are in love with thermo-imaging. How much of a heat sig would a full enviromental body armor give off?

Enough for them to see a target....of course just up the ante.

If in EBA the enemy would have thermo too. This means everyone is shooting at thermo images and if your players don't have IFF tags present in the HUD's of their armor a friendly fire incident could occur.

[J. Lionheart]

Indeed, heat transfer has nothing to do with whether an item is air-tight or not. Heat goes directly through things that will stop air, water, radiation, and more. That's because heat isn't a seperate object, it's a manipulation of the object itself.

Example. Take an eighth-inch piece of aluminum sheeting. Definitely impermeable to air and water, and will stop some types of radioactive particles. Place it on the burner of your home stove for a couple minute, and then hover your hand over the other side. It will be very hot! Another example. Take a sealed can of some food or another. That sealed can is buttoned up just as tight as EBA is, if not tighter. Place it on a stove, and the contents will not only heat up, they'll explode all over.

Heat is simply a measure of the collisions of atoms in an environment. Heating something up is just speeding up the atoms' movements, thus causing them to strike each other more often. That causes the atoms next to them to be struck more often, and then the next set, and the next set, and so on until it is through the material and in to the environment beyond, where the movement transfers back in to the air, and because of how large the world is, basically disipates to unnoticable levels.

Everything, including EBA, is made of atoms, thus, enough heat will transfer through anything you care to name.

[glitterboy2098]

ok that sounds fair.
i was watching a show on sci fi that investigated the power plant that melted down in russia(btw thats what stated the whole covo in our group) but for obvious reasons they had to where hazmat suit to guard against radition. well,as they were investigating paranormal activitys with the thermo i noticed that as they passed the camera guy, i saw slight heat sigs around his armpits etc. i was wondering."Is that all the heat you see" well with sealed enviromental i would think you wouldnt even see that.

those suits have larger gaps between person and suit, which helps hide the heat. they also use materials that slow down radiation. since heat is a form of radiation, the suit stops much of it too. (those suits are like sauna's..they trap so much heat) the armpits and such are places where the suit is much closer to the skin, and generally a bit thinner in material, so they are places more heat can escape.

i my game (again i dont why this isnt covered) i imagine the enviromental armor isnt sealed all the time only when extreme weather or there is a "Hazard" in the air OR the wearer can seal the armor at will. thanks for the ideas though.

i'd rule they are sealed anytime you wear it with the helmet, but generally they only switch to internal air supplies if they detect dangerous enviroments. usually they use external air sent through coolers and filters.

[Shorty Lickens]

Based on the descriptions in most of the books, EBA fully insulates and protects the wearer and also regulates temperature to keep them comfortable. Based on that, I'd say the persons heat signature would not show up at all or be extremely weak, BUT, the AC unit would generate a massive heat bloom. All that heat from the body has to go somewhere and it would light up the infrared spectrum.

The problem with my theory is: If the suits environmental controls are ever malfunctioning then the person inside would overheat and die. It would make sense they'd have the ability to open up vents and stuff to let air out, but then they'd be vulnerable to any area effect MD weapons, which is also bad. I cant seem to recall anytime we ever worried about this in the middle of a combat session. If the persons armor gets used up we just had them run for shelter, but if the players are role-playing correctly this should rarely happen. We also never said the clamps would get fused shut and the person would be stuck inside of basically useless armor. Maybe we should think about these things.

Strange we never worried about this in any of our games. Not even when someone was bombarded with plasma grenades, we never concerned ourselves with the person inside overheating.
Forget it, I dont care that much and it just adds complications to the game play. We'll do what we've been doing which is worry about the weight from power armor and robots holding players down and incapacitating them. Heat and other environmental concerns arent going to be an issue for us unless we are in a hostile area, like space or a planet or dimension where the environment is brutal to a human body.

[Qev]

It's possible that the suit, in extreme circumstances, may simply store heat in the coolant. Of course, this is only a very, very short-term solution, and the wearer would need to move to a more clement area in short order to get rid of the accumulated heat.

Or they could use sacrificial coolant; dump as much heat into a quantity of coolant as you can, then just dump it overboard. This obviously runs into the problem of a limited supply of coolant, but it'd work in an emergency.

[Natasha]

It's possible that the suit, in extreme circumstances, may simply store heat in the coolant. Of course, this is only a very, very short-term solution, and the wearer would need to move to a more clement area in short order to get rid of the accumulated heat.

Or they could use sacrificial coolant; dump as much heat into a quantity of coolant as you can, then just dump it overboard. This obviously runs into the problem of a limited supply of coolant, but it'd work in an emergency.

Perhaps you could refrigerate the wearer's urine.