Not really - you'd obviously wear unitard-like long underwear, sleeves, etc., underneath it. Otherwise you'd have to dry clean the damn thing every couple days. (Eeew.)
And sweaters by themselves aren't particularly warm without under-layers, imo.
Kirk wrote: Duke -
That depends . . mostly on the strength needed in the outer wall. Bleeding edge would be a no.
Then again, they could just make the walls a bit thicker and ship it in pieces to be welded on site, If the walls were thick enough the somewhat weaker welds would be strong enough.
So yeah, I don't really understand why it had to be done that way either.
Kirk wrote: You show decent metallurgical knowledge. A pressure vessel is one of those items which needs bleeding edge strength and so which we would want to avoid any processing which could change the steel's temper. Welding always affects the temper. The heat affected zone (HAZ), the weld itself and a small band on either side of the weld, will be back to or nearly back to the annealed condition. Heating to the molten state in the weld and somewhat less warmth in the nearby areas removes or reduced any work hardening or heat treatment previously done to the alloy. Annealed is much weaker than the heat treated or work hardened state. Some alloys can be reheat treated though rarely to the same high strength achievable the first time the alloy is heat treated. And of course work hardening on a finished item like a pressure vessel is impossible, beyond bead blasting the surface. Some alloys will only strengthen via work hardening. Some only via heat treatment. Steels fit into both categories depending on the alloy.
Even so, all that would be required to create the pressure vessel on site via welding is to take this strength reduction into account. Start with pieces sufficiently thicker that the alloy in the annealed condition is strong enough. Shipping problem solved. I'm not sure why this particular pressure vessel could not be done that way. Perhaps the cost of shipping something this ungainly isn't as expensive as using more metal to make the pressure vessel out of an annealed alloy.
jkahless wrote:If I remember correctly, when welding a strength critical area, the steel is often preheated before welding, and is insulated or even heated over the cooling period using heating blankets to reduce brittleness and maintain the correct ratios of grain structure in the steel. That's a shipyard practice though, and I don't know if it'd transfer to terrestrial applications. There is no large scale welding in the civilian maritime world that I know of equals the type needed for a pressure vessel.