In early 1942 Pyke and Bernal called in Max Perutz to determine whether an ice floe large enough to withstand Atlantic conditions could be built up fast enough. He pointed out that natural icebergs have too small a surface above water for an airstrip, and are prone to suddenly rolling over. The project would have been abandoned, except for the invention of Pykrete, a mixture of water and woodpulp which frozen together was stronger than plain ice, was slower melting, and of course would not sink. It has been suggested that Pyke was inspired by Inuit sleds reinforced with moss.[1] This is probably apocryphal, as the material was originally described in a paper by Mark and Hohenstein in Brooklyn, NY.[2]
Pykrete could be machined like wood and cast into shapes like metal, and when immersed in water formed an insulating shell of wet wood pulp on its surface which protected its interior from further melting. However, Perutz found a problem: ice slowly flows, in what is known as plastic flow, and his tests showed that a Pykrete ship would slowly sag unless it was cooled to −16 °C (3.2 °F). To accomplish this, the ship's surface would have to be protected by insulation and it would need a refrigeration plant and a complicated system of ducts.[2]
Amazing what you run in to on Anandtech!!
Hermann Mark (of Mark and Hohenstein) was my wife's grandfather. I remember talking to him in the late 1980's or very early 1990's about the ice ship that was proposed. He had been chased out of Austria by the Nazis and worked on many projects to help the Allies win WWII. He had worked for International Paper near Toronto in the late 1930's and continued his research on wood pulp at Brooklyn Poly after his move there. Dr. Mark died, still lucid and entertaining, at the age of 97 in 1992.
Amazing what you run in to on Anandtech!!
"In early 1942 Pyke and Bernal called in Max Perutz to determine whether an ice floe large enough to withstand Atlantic conditions could be built up fast enough. He pointed out that natural icebergs have too small a surface above water for an airstrip, and are prone to suddenly rolling over. The project would have been abandoned, except for the invention of Pykrete, a mixture of water and woodpulp which frozen together was stronger than plain ice, was slower melting, and of course would not sink. It has been suggested that Pyke was inspired by Inuit sleds reinforced with moss.[1] This is probably apocryphal, as the material was originally described in a paper by Mark and Hohenstein in Brooklyn, NY.[2]"
Hermann Mark (of Mark and Hohenstein) was my wife's grandfather. I remember talking to him in the late 1980's or very early 1990's about the ice ship that was proposed. He had been chased out of Austria by the Nazis and worked on many projects to help the Allies win WWII. He had worked for International Paper near Toronto in the late 1930's and continued his research on wood pulp at Brooklyn Poly after his move there. Dr. Mark died, still lucid and entertaining, at the age of 97 in 1992.