On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 05:49:34PM -0800, John Young wrote:
How would the LME work on the interior structure of the plane? The skin has little structural strength but does streamline the
On modern cars and aircraft the skin is a structural part. There was a post WWII DeHaviland (the Comet I beleive) that kept coming apart in the air... some of the windows had too-sharp corners that concentrated stress from pressurization and caused cracks in the skin, eventually resulting in sudden failure. Once aluminum gets a crack it goes pretty fast. OTOH, LME requires the metals to be liquid or close to it. Even tin has a melting point around 500 degrees F, and it's a pretty low melting point metal. Engine mounting parts might get that hot, but not the exterior surface. There's probably other methods of causing quick corrosion of failure besides LME... what I googled about it makes me not worry about it as something sprayed on the exterior of aircraft to cause sabotage. Eric