Max humanoid physical strength

EDIT: There were some great answers here, and I realize this is a kinda broad question, but I'm accepting Monty Wild answer as it provided me with the info I needed to push this forward. Now I have a place to start research. Thanks everyone!

Giving a character "superhuman" strength is quite common in sci-fi, fantasy or just about any other genre, but how much is actually that strength varies wildly.

What is the strength limit for a humanoid?

For this "humanoid" is defined as:

• Two legs
• Two arms
• Height between 1.75 and 2.15 m
• Body volume around that of a fit male.

I'm not talking about giving superhuman strength to a human, it doesn't even needs to be organic, could be a robot) before you start breaking the laws of physics or requiring fictional materials?

I'm talking about peak short term strength here. How much can you lift and throw, how hard can a punch be. Actions that last a 1, 2, 10 seconds at most.

Imagine you can use whatever materials for the bones, skin, muscles, you are effectively designing it (with current or near future materials). Where do you draw the line, and how could you compute it? I imagine it has to do with the fracture strength of the bones and muscles, and how much the muscles contract. Guessing graphene bones and vanadium dioxide muscle would be about the best currently.

Assume that all the organs or electronic required to power up and control it are roughly the size of a brain, so you have the chest cavity free for other stuff.

Also, as a follow-up, how does this change if you start to admit more sci-fi stuff like unbreakable materials and the like. Mostly interested on the first part though.

posted over 7 years ago

Santiago Pacheco‭

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