Tempshift plate material selection

[StarSquid]

Tempshift plates have a wider variety of material options than any other building, but I’m having a hard time figuring out which to use. The obvious ones:

Diamond has the best thermal conductivity pre-spaceflight

Refined metals are almost as good and a bit easier to get

Ice lets you move an enormous amount of ice and helps it distribute heat fast

Igneous rock and dirt store a lot of heat, which gives the system some inertia.

Is there any point to the other ones?

[KittenIsAGeek]

22 minutes ago, StarSquid said:

Tempshift plates have a wider variety of material options than any other building, but I’m having a hard time figuring out which to use. The obvious ones:

Diamond has the best thermal conductivity pre-spaceflight

Refined metals are almost as good and a bit easier to get

Ice lets you move an enormous amount of ice and helps it distribute heat fast

Igneous rock and dirt store a lot of heat, which gives the system some inertia.

Is there any point to the other ones?

I've used granite in the early game before getting refined metals or diamond.  

[biopon]

I don't think so. 

Thermium, diamond, aluminium, or refined metals for equalizing temperature - depending on what you have available, what the temperature constraints are, and how much buffering you can tolerate. Granite (or maybe mafic) if you need to cover absolutely massive areas and you don't have anything else available. Obsidian is maybe useful for super high temps and large areas.

Igneous to store heat, or dirt to store cold (or heat below 328C).

Ice to melt it I guess. 

[DonDegow]

You listed the main uses of temp shift plates; Diamond, Ice and Igneous rock.

As Kitten noted, the use of other less optimal materials is if it's the only thing you have in good quantity.

[storm6436]

IIRC, dirt is better than igneous for insulating tempshifts.  Same conductivity, higher specific heat. 

[suxkar]

Aluminium is better then diamond

54 minutes ago, storm6436 said:

IIRC, dirt is better than igneous for insulating tempshifts.  Same conductivity, higher specific heat. 

The idea of insulating tempshift is misleading, although a tempshift made of, say, ceramic, will take a long time to heat, it will increase heat transfer due to how tempshifts work

[bobucles]

"Insulating" is a bit misleading. The main goal is to create a heat buffer, so that the temperature is very difficult to change. Dupe tombstones also work well for heat buffering.

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 hours ago, storm6436 said:

IIRC, dirt is better than igneous for insulating tempshifts.  Same conductivity, higher specific heat. 

In cases where your upper temperature is going to be over 300c, igneous is the better choice.  Yes, dirt is an awesome buffer, but it has an upper limit of 327c.    An alternative, then, is igneous rock.  There are other materials that would work better, but they're only available by using the toolbox at the moment.

[BLACKBERREST3]

The mechanics behind all these suggestions are SHC, Thermal Conductivity, and Temperature Range (phase changing no no). Mass is a constant in this situation.

• Large SHC = Greater Thermal Capacity
• Low SCH = Lower Thermal Capacity
• High Thermal Conductivity = Greater Thermal Transfer
• Low Thermal Conductivity = Lower Thermal Transfer

The examples for these are listed above/below this post 

http://oni-db.com for materials list.

Unless you plan to melt the plate, then phase change yes yes

[storm6436]

1 minute ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

The mechanics behind all these suggestions are SHC, Thermal Conductivity, and Temperature Range (phase changing no no). Mass is a constant in this situation.

• Large SHC = Greater Thermal Capacity
• Low SCH = Lower Thermal Capacity
• High Thermal Conductivity = Greater Thermal Transfer
• Low Thermal Conductivity = Lower Thermal Transfer

The examples for these are listed above/below this post 

http://oni-db.com for materials list.

Unless you plan to melt the plate, then phase change yes yes

 I was actually getting ready to post something similar. Thanks.

 

34 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

In cases where your upper temperature is going to be over 300c, igneous is the better choice.  Yes, dirt is an awesome buffer, but it has an upper limit of 327c.    An alternative, then, is igneous rock.  There are other materials that would work better, but they're only available by using the toolbox at the moment.

And in cases when you're not above 327c which will be the vast majority of the time, dirt's still better.  I don't know about you, but I try not to make a habit of using substandard materials when I don't need to. 

 

10 hours ago, suxkar said:

Aluminium is better then diamond

The idea of insulating tempshift is misleading, although a tempshift made of, say, ceramic, will take a long time to heat, it will increase heat transfer due to how tempshifts work

 Except it's not.  What makes insulation insulation is its ability to buffer heat, effectively stalling heat transfer.  Does a tempshift plate match an actual insulated tile? No  but not every type of insulation has the same R value.

 And speaking of which, thanks for providing an example of a material that sounds good for plates but isn't.  At 84% of the heat capacity and 1/3 the thermal conductivity of igneous, it's basically useless. Any moving gasses will pass on through with very little interaction due to the low thermal conductivity, and for every joule of energy applied, its temp goes up 1.25 degrees where igneous jumps just 1.

[Steve Raptor]

I only ever used granite and diamond tempshift plates in my designs.

What is the motivation behind using igneous rock and dirt for storing heat? which design/s can make a good use of tempshift plates made out of dirt or igneous rock?

 

[Xaekai]

Igneous has the highest SHC of the minerals, decent conductivity, and is usually plentiful

[biopon]

48 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

which design/s can make a good use of tempshift plates made out of dirt or igneous rock

Things I've used igneous tempshifts for:

- Storing rocket launch heat so it can be sent to turbines

- In steam heat batteries under volcanos

- Behind liquid locks

- LOX/LH tanks

Any place where you want the room to retain a certain temperature (or just accumulate heat) and not react to change much.

 

[suxkar]

6 hours ago, storm6436 said:

 

 Except it's not.  What makes insulation insulation is its ability to buffer heat, effectively stalling heat transfer.  Does a tempshift plate match an actual insulated tile? No  but not every type of insulation has the same R value.

 And speaking of which, thanks for providing an example of a material that sounds good for plates but isn't.  At 84% of the heat capacity and 1/3 the thermal conductivity of igneous, it's basically useless. Any moving gasses will pass on through with very little interaction due to the low thermal conductivity, and for every joule of energy applied, its temp goes up 1.25 degrees where igneous jumps just 1.

Thank you for giving me the motivation to finally test what I thought was reasonable but not certain:

The 2 squares are perfectly identical exept for the ceramic tempshift on the right one. Tiles are mode out of ceramic, drywall of igneous, the outer layer is 300K oxygen, the inner 1000K oxygen. The differential is obviously huge, I made it this way to speed things up.

 

Here is the result after a little bit more then 1 cycle:

The ceramic tempshift caused an extra 0.2 degrees temperature increase alone, even in the corner tile (which was to be expected due to how tempshifts work). I tried the same experiment with a tempshift made of insulation, in that case there was, again as to be expected, no extra heat transfer.
The one thing that might invalidate this experiment is the high differential: in theory it should just make things faster, in practice very low heat transfer is ignored so the effects of the ceramic tempshift might not be appreaciable with low temp differencials.
Still, I'm not 100% this was pertinent to what you said, but it should prove my point: tempshifts at best do nothing to insulate. They will suck some heat, at a pace decided by the material they are made of, but ultimately they will favour heat transfer, even if made of "insulating" materials. This is basically the reason why it is not adviceable to place tempshifts in, for example, the perimeter of steam rooms, as they partially negate the insulating effect of insulated tiles. We are not talking about crazy effects of course, but they are noticeable, especially, for example, in LOX and LH2 production.
There are plenty of threads discussing precisely this.
If there are other instances in which you think tempshifts can help insulate, be my guest and suggest them, I'll be happy to test 

On a final note, sorry for post derailing!
I use granite and igneous a lot since they are abundant. Granite is actually a decent conductor so it is great if you want to balance temperature in a huge room. I use igneous in the same way, but when I want the transfer to be slower and/or I need a material with higher melting point (granite melts under hydrogen rockets for example). Sandstone is in between so can be handy, but is not as abundant. Lead is also great for big rooms, but is offers almost no inertia since is has very low SHC and melts a bit above 300C.
Aluminium is absurdly good, in many situations even better then Thermium. You should check the numbers, but it has more than twice the conductivity of diamond and almost twice the heat capacity. Almost the same conductivity of thermium and +50% specific heat capacity. The only problem is that it melts at only 600C, which might be relevant in some setups. Thermium melts at 2600C, diamond at almost 4000C.

[nakomaru]

Great demonstration suxkar, and perfectly stating the obvious: "tempshifts at best do nothing to insulate".

Don't confuse a slow change in T with a slow rate of heat transfer.

I use copper tempshifts and they stay between 150 and 320 max (very briefly) with petroleum rockets, so it all depends on your system as a whole whether they will melt.

[0xFADE]

Granite is great for pretty much everything under 600c

[storm6436]

10 hours ago, suxkar said:

*brevity snip*

Question:  What's outside your squares?  Just making sure because if it's not vacuum then you don't have a closed system.  While that doesn't necessarily introduce a big delta, said difference between what we think the results are and what they actually are is non-zero, potentially non-ignorable as well.

 

Okay, so, I'm going to do my best to avoid math with this explanation as, well, text (specifically forum text, with all it's HTML non-LaTex goodness) is *not* a good medium for what I'd like to say... and to be fair, I don't really have time to type out the full thing anyway, which would mean trying to squeeze most of a semester of Statistical Mechanics into a single post on top of trying to do derivations to put it in a form applicable to the quantized length used in ONI...  eh.  I'll throw in some stuff for the educational value, but I'll try to keep it brief.

 Most people do not understand thermal physics nearly as well as they think they do.  Part of that is because they also don't understand what heat really is, nor do they have a firm understanding of what atoms are or how they react.  Similarly, things like Specific Heat Capacity (SHC) and the like do not mean what most thinks they do.  That might sound insulting or arrogant to some, and for that I apologize, but it's a statement made from observation and from a position of actually having done enough stat mech and quantum to make my eyes bleed. 

Educational note: In real life, things like SHC are not linear.  They're also a function of temperature.  ONI treats it like a constant, just like most people do because in the regimes we're used to living in, it's more or less a constant.  (ie. between -20F and 120F) ... but again, in the temperature regimes we're running steam gens in the game, it's not.  (Actual SHC values for water).

As applicable to the game?  Well, you'd need to be familiar with linear algebra to make solving it "easy" however the easiest way of looking at this is as it's presented in the game: a series of boxes.  Each tile is its own box, each layer is it's own box... so for every tile you see visible, there's actually a number of boxes "behind" it that have the various other things "in the tile" inside them.  This is partially why there's issues with background and foreground buildings conflicting, etc. 

So, the change in temperature, baseline formula, at its highest level, is a series of summations, but the core function is little different from real life's Q=m*c*dT.  How the interactions between the layers are defined (or rather were defined at a specific game version) can be found here. Granted, it's in DTUs but functionally, it's not terribly different aside from the inclusion of dt (time slice).   I'll point out that having the timeslice in there does mean the answers generated will necessarily vary from what you'd expect in real life depending on if you're playing at 1x, 2x, 3x, or whatever.  That's a numerical artifact of the simulation working in tics, thus time itself is quantized.  Without continuous flow, you end up with some oddities if the right conditions are met.

For a single tile of gas, it's internally sourced temperature change is a summation of all the changes for each layer behind it.  It's external change is, as far as I remember, the summation of the same equation for all neighboring tiles.  What I don't remember is if neighboring is determined as 1 tile vertically and horizontally or if it transfers diagonally as well.  I don't believe it does, which would mean that any diagonal heat transfer is technically phase lagged by 1 tick, provided they're doing 1 thermal pass per tick -- otherwise, you could certainly get diagonals by multiple passes per tick even with x/y-only transfers provided the subsequent passes handle tile-to-tile transfers, not just tile-to-other-layer transfers.  The latter seems most likely to be the implementation.

To the point where this gets ultimately relevant is that for gas or solids in a tile any neighboring shift plates (1 tile, all directions) count as being in in the background tile layer for said gas.  This complicates things and leads to some counter-intuitive results.  Suxkar highlighted one of them, which is to say that it does screw with how one figures insulated tiles would work... because outside of odd circumstances, one never has something else in the tile with an insulated tile, so all those extra summations for "stuff in same tile" are zero.  With an adjacent tempshift plate, it's not.  Other conditions can be found on the interactions link I posted in the paragraph before last.

Unfortunately, without a fair bit of work I don't have time for, meshing all the rules into a coherent singular formula  isn't something something we have.  If we had one, it'd be as "simple" as throwing initial conditions and the system's basic topology of the system into it and then solving directly for relevant answers... but, we can do a simple thought experiment now (and I'll probably sandbox it out when I have time later this week and post results if nobody beats me to it.)

 Keeping this simple to keep it short:
 Take a 1 tile tall section of space, make it 5 tiles wide, lined with neutronium (for zero heat transfer)  Set all the gasses the left most column to some temperature T1 and all the gasses in the right most column to temperature T2.  By default, if you let time run forward, after a certain time we'll call t_e, the system will reach equilibrium and have the same temperature everywhere.  If all the gasses are the same gas, then that equilibrium will be T1+T2/2.  If not, things get a fair bit more complicated, and t_e certainly shifts, but the final result should be a weighted average where one multiplies the starting temps by the relevant SHC.   (ie. [SHC1*T1+SHC2*T2)/2])

 Running the same experiment with a tempshift tile in the middle, necessarily means t_e is not the same time.  You've added mass to the system, so it will certainly weight things. (*physics nerd smirk*)

So, energy transfer from left to right works almost exactly the same... almost.
time slice 1:
1 DTU enters tile 2.  Raising the temperature of everything in it. This should mean that 1 DTU is split between the building and the gas.

time slice 2+:
Gas: Less than 1 DTU enters tile 2, a portion of that is pushed to the next tile, etc.
Shiftplate: For tiles its temperature is colder than, it pulls a portion of the heat entering the tile and a portion of the heat in the tile.  For tiles it's hotter than, it pushes a portion of its heat into.

 I got curious and built a spreadsheet to simulate this but it's buggy at the moment.  I'll have to finish it later to get accurate results, but the preliminary shows that a dirt shift plate does, in fact, slow the spread of heat, which makes it an insulator.  Fair caution on taking that the final word though, whatever typo I didn't catch in the code is adding about 1.7 DTUs per cycle (600 1 second time slices) to the system. Which is slightly larger than the temperature difference between the two simulations at the end of 600 time slices.  Still a good chance fixing the bug might wipe that out, but it's certainly suggestive.  

 I'll fix the spreadsheet... or just load up the sandbox and do it in-game when I get the time, probably Thursday.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I'm assuming you've seen these threads. They are the only two that I know of right now. The rest of the information regarding collisions of mediums is scattered in old posts. I've been able to collect the recent ones though. Beware of Flashing, temp clamping, temp resetting, shc differences, phase change temperature variability, and rails in general. Building-content temp transfer was recently told to me by nakomaru. They have their own mechanic that involves the root tile. There is also temp clamping on combining stacks of debri, but I forget how exactly this works.

Spoiler

 

 

This is where the info from the wiki you linked came from.

 

 

[nakomaru]

You seem to understand that tempshifts conduct heat by their presence (or at best, do not). How do you imagine this isn't the opposite of insulation?

[BLACKBERREST3]

List of layers

• Automation+bridge+empty space on gate
• Gas pipes+bridge+contents
• Liquid pipes+bridge+contents
• Drywall/tempshift
• Power wire+bridge
• Rail+bridge+contents
• Foreground Buildings+contents
• Critter+contents
• Duplicant+contents?
• Debris
• Comet+contents?
• Biome/void
• UI
• Gas/liquid/solid

Spoiler

From what I know so far without bringing temp equations in is that:

• Biome/UI are visual
• Void has a certain rate of matter deletion. I once ran into a problem where space couldn't delete materials fast enough making the void Capable of temperature transfer
• In a vacuum no heat transfers except the root tile of the contents in a building?
• Only the gas/liquid/solid layer will affect the other layers
• Bridges transfer temperature between two points with a space in the middle
• Some of these layers have their own temp multipliers (rails)
• All doors can trap debris, critters, dupes, and solids (buggy). Only mech and manual will destroy liquids/gasses.
• To steal from the wiki, "The Tempshift Plate is a Utilities Building that occupies a 3x3 space for the purpose of heat exchange calculations. It does not occupy the space for purpose of blocking construction of most other buildings (with exception of tiles and doors), and generally does not interact with anything outside of heat calculations."
• Solid/liquid/gas layer will affect surrounding tiles (diagonally?)

 

2 hours ago, nakomaru said:

You seem to understand that tempshifts conduct heat by their presence (or at best, do not). How do you imagine this isn't the opposite of insulation?

me, I can't tell if you mean me? From what I gather that @storm6436 is saying to put it simply is that calculations are made for a plate that depend on layers it interacts with. There is supposedly a 1-tick delay for corner tiles in these calculations. The fact that it has to do this in all nine tiles and still produce 1 output temperature from it means that it can become an insulator in certain situations.

21 hours ago, suxkar said:

tempshifts at best do nothing to insulate. They will suck some heat, at a pace decided by the material they are made of, but ultimately they will favour heat transfer, even if made of "insulating" materials.

I believe that area has a certain effect in your tests which doesn't necessarily mean that they favor heat transfer. It just means they have more temp transfer opportunities.

[BLACKBERREST3]

There was another post that does not go into as much depth as this and I would genuinely like to know more behind the mechanics of tempshift plates even if I have to read it 5 times to get it 

Spoiler

 

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

my tests have shown so far that hot rises which is very pronounced when using insulation plates and hydrogen. Plates do conduct corners, but I am not sure how to test for the 1-tick in between insulated insulation tiles. Insulated plates act like a thermal conductor when chained together because they provide more area and range for temp transfer to occur. Extreme temperatures also play into effect when they heat the insulation plates themselves. I tested this with plates that were next to eachother and I have tested it when they were 2 spaces apart from eachother so as not to overlap. I'll do more later with pics, I;m tired rn.

If there is a way to restrict the plate to test this idea, I will find out tomorrow.

[suxkar]

7 hours ago, storm6436 said:

Running the same experiment with a tempshift tile in the middle, necessarily means t_e is not the same time.  You've added mass to the system, so it will certainly weight things. (*physics nerd smirk*)

So, energy transfer from left to right works almost exactly the same... almost.
time slice 1:
1 DTU enters tile 2.  Raising the temperature of everything in it. This should mean that 1 DTU is split between the building and the gas.

time slice 2+:
Gas: Less than 1 DTU enters tile 2, a portion of that is pushed to the next tile, etc.
Shiftplate: For tiles its temperature is colder than, it pulls a portion of the heat entering the tile and a portion of the heat in the tile.  For tiles it's hotter than, it pushes a portion of its heat into.

I fail to see how this is different from what I said, may be I am not understanding your point. As I said, the presence of extra mass (tempshift) will make it so that some extra heat will be "sucked" so the tempoerature will not raise as fast at the begginning, but there will still be extra heat transfer due to tempshift mechanic. That was entirely the point of my test. There is more heat transfer much before the temperature equalizes. So "insulating" tempshifts actually do the opposite of what you want them to do.

[storm6436]

13 hours ago, suxkar said:

I fail to see how this is different from what I said, may be I am not understanding your point. As I said, the presence of extra mass (tempshift) will make it so that some extra heat will be "sucked" so the tempoerature will not raise as fast at the begginning, but there will still be extra heat transfer due to tempshift mechanic. That was entirely the point of my test. There is more heat transfer much before the temperature equalizes. So "insulating" tempshifts actually do the opposite of what you want them to do.

  It's different for the reasons I outlined in my first few paragraphs.  People, in general, do not understand the physics involved.

In terms of real life, literally everything made of bosonic matter conducts heat, including insulation, it's only a matter of how quickly. 

A lot of people think "Insulation is what keeps your house warm in the winter" and they're incorrect.  Your furnace keeps your house warm. Insulation only slows the heat leaving which means you don't have to run the furnace constantly.  Similarly the same thing applies to A/C in the summer.  

 All insulation is, is a layer of material with a lower thermal conductivity.  That's it. 

This might be helpful.  It's worth noting what most people "feel" as temperature is actually a rate of change.  dU/dS, to be specific.  change of kinetic energy per unit entropy changed. 

 Basically, if it takes twice as long for the far side to reach equilibrium, the shift plate is acting as insulation. Anything that slows it down is an insulator.  If it takes half as long, the shift plate is acting as a conductor.   That we have some materials that don't move heat at all is a result of the temp clamping, not their thermal conductivity. 

14 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

my tests have shown so far that hot rises which is very pronounced when using insulation plates and hydrogen. Plates do conduct corners, but I am not sure how to test for the 1-tick in between insulated insulation tiles. Insulated plates act like a thermal conductor when chained together because they provide more area and range for temp transfer to occur. Extreme temperatures also play into effect when they heat the insulation plates themselves. I tested this with plates that were next to eachother and I have tested it when they were 2 spaces apart from eachother so as not to overlap. I'll do more later with pics, I;m tired rn.

If there is a way to restrict the plate to test this idea, I will find out tomorrow.

 Worth noting, there are a few ways to calculate heat flux in a per tick system.  The assumption that diagonals aren't calculated directly on a per tile basis comes from the fact that you can have a 300C oil biome tile diagonal from a 0C ice biome (and insulated tiles on the off diagonals and it doesn't clobber the ice.  This changes if you stick a plate in the corner... so it seems reasonable then that tile-to-tile transfers are vertical/horizontal only. 

As for the per tick lag, there are a number of ways one can write a working temp engine, the 1-tick lag bit is the simplest that doesn't involve circular references and fits the diagonal observation above.  They could also direct the thermal input into the tile in general, splitting it amongst all valid targets at the same time.  If they do that, I haven't seen any posts saying if the distribution is weighted or not.  That was one of the things I was going to look at later this week to figure out exactly how they're doing it. 

[nakomaru]

This is a whole lot of bombastic nonsense and irrelevant story telling. I really cannot imagine how we would ever communicate with any success.