This might be plane on a treadmill adjacent, but it is a serious question for engineers, know-it-alls, and other dorks:
Consider a steel dumpster that is ostensibly 3 cubic yards in size. As it is loaded, lifted, dumped, and set back down, it obviously gets dents and other types of deformations.
Question: Is it more likely that these deformations increase or decrease the internal volume of the dumpster?
The background of this involves a real-world scenario where I have a purported expert opining that deformed dumpsters generally increase in volume. This seems insane to me. I have read the abstracts of mathematical studies (which I don't understand) that basically assume that solids undergoing plastic deformation maintain the same volume, but we are obviously not dealing with a solid object here.
Moreover, I can't get past the fact that if you have an empty aluminum can, fill it to the brim, and try to deform it it any way, that it is going to lose volume and force water out of the can.
But I can also see why a three dimensional box-type shape with angled sides could theoretically increase in volume depending on the elasticity of the steel or other facts (e.g. can the middle of the top front edge of a dumpster be forced "outwards" in a way that doesn't also deform the sides, which could potentially lead to an increase in volume?).
One more data point is that this expert literally wrote in his report that "the floor deflection that occurred due to the undersigned's weight of 290 pounds was approximately 1/4 inch." I find this hilarious, because these dumpsters are used for residential/business purposes, rather than industrial, and I have a hard time believing (a) that fatboy would put this in his report and (b) that these dumpsters frequently see 290 pound point loads.
Regardless, he went on to conclude that "While it would be difficult to measure and calculate the exact amount of volume created from wall and floor outward bending of each container, this outward bending creates more unloaded container volume, which will be unique to each container from its unique outward bending."
What say you all?
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