What maths do you propose doing? Seriously.
Maths exist for this problem, but it's unlikely Vixen knows about them so she's shifting the burden of proof. She suggests that if we "do the maths," it will prove her point. But
we have to do the maths—she's exempt and just gets to beg the question.
Consider the major plastic parts of the cars in those car fire videos you're carefully avoiding polluting your eyes with. Those parts are reduced to burning puddles in very short order.
While the maths exist, they're advanced. Therefore the question is actually answered easier and more convincingly via controlled empirical study. However, if maths is what Vixen considers dispositive, she's welcome to provide those that she thinks proves her point.
Do you imagine a fuel tank is immune to that because the fire needs to heat the tank and the fuel inside before it will fail? Think again. Consider how much of the tank wall is not in contact with fuel. The space above the fuel and the filler neck are not cooled by fuel inside and will melt and burn like other plastics. Once the tank is breached, the fuel will ignite in short order.
Funny you mention that because most vehicles that burn a liquid hydrocarbon need to have vented fuel caps to prevent the pressure from building up inside. Certainly a fire will heat up both the tank and its contents, and those heated contents will vent vaporized fuel at an much higher rate than normal use, even sitting in an outdoor car park in Dubai in summer.
Keep in mind that just with any other load- or pressure-bearing item, you don't have to fail the structural material
completely in order for the item to fail. You just have to weaken it to a critical point. The polymer in a fuel tank merely has to soften to the point where either the partially-vented pressure in the tank or the weight of the fuel fails some part of the tank or its fittings. The problem is not how much heat it takes to reduce the fuel tank to a puddle of liquid, but how much it takes to weaken to to the point of structural failure from other loads.
I humbly suggest vixen won't "do the maths" herself because she's not actually able to do heat transfer computations, and as per usual assumed because she can't no one can.
I can assert with absolutely no fear of contradiction that Vixen cannot do the heat-transfer computations that she insinuates would prove her believe regarding fuel tanks. I can certainly do them, but they are quite extensive and in this case would require modeling all the parameters we can only guess at. Not all fires are created equal, and the inquality among them requires an analytical approach that covers all the bases. That takes weeks. This is also why we perform qualifications on normalized heat profiles and caution people not to take the results literally.
Not everyone is on the same level as you vixen, some people simply know more and understand better. You're not the teacher and you're certainly not the smartest person in the room. Your fragile ego statements that you're six steps ahead show just how upset you are getting about people pointing out that you're a failure though.
Pretty much.
