Soda Can Failure
 

Does anyone know (or can they find out) at what internal pressure a soda can will fail?

I've had a lengthy debate with some coworkers this morning...

The soda in this picture is frozen solid:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1171898770.jpg

No idea. Must be a slow day at work.

Well, they could either debate the Nascar race or soda cans :)

I don't know about soda cans, but years ago I had a plastic coke bottle blow up. I'd made some ginger beer that I put in coke bottles but the high yeast content made me ill so I just didn't drink it and stored it for a year or two until I put it outside in the sun by the trash bins. There was a huge boom and I went outside expecting to see a niegbours house blown up by a gas explosion or something, but all the houses along the back were looking at my place. The next day I found the exploded coke bottle. It was so well made there was no real weak point so the pressure just grew and grew until it burst down one side. Interestingly the top hadn't blown off.

I left a un-opened soda can in the cup holder of my truck on a hot day...It blew :mad:


KT

Lubey, do you know the pressure at which these burst?

I'm sure ther's an ASTM standard for it. The suppliers must have some spec to work off of. You should be able to find it on theweb.

I can't find anything at www.astm.org.

I think it is actually a DOT standard, believe it or not. I remember years ago when I was flying R/C aircraft a lot of guys were using the plastic pop bottles as air reseviors for retractable gear operation and such. I know they were running over 100 psi in them. One of the guys found the burst strength standard and, like I said, I believe the DOT wrote it.

Soda cans must be the only thing ASTM doesn't have performance standards for. I am surprised. Let me look around and see if I can find somethign.

I can see the DOT doing the specs since most of them will be shipped over the road by trucks.

See here

http://www.gono.com/history/history.htm

A much sturdier container than that used for food products was required to withstand the 80 to 90 psi pressure of pasteurization, In contrast to the 25 to 30 psi used in food processing.

Second article, 1994 Scientific American, 90 PSI

http://gk-12.osu.edu/Docs/Hosford_AlumBeverageCan.pdf