Ballistic testing of B4C-Al cermets
conference paper
The ballistic effectiveness of ceramic armor can be improved by improving the ductility, because this would increase the time duration of the erosion process where most of the projectile energy is dissipated. Increase in ductility can be obtained by mixing in some metallic phase into a ceramic. For lightweight armor applications boroncarbide (B4C) based cermets are attractive, because of their low specific weight, extreme hardness and impact resistance. At TNO Prins Maurits Laboratory B4C-Al cermets, called BORCAL, have been fabricated with shock compaction techniques. A short overview of the fabrication techniques and of the static and dynamical mechanical properties is given. Depth of penetration experiments have been executed to determine the ballistic performance of the fabricated cermet. These ballistic experiments and results are described and presented in this paper. Although the ballistic efficiency of the BORCAL was lower than alumina, BORCAL showed multi-hit capability and can be further improved.
TNO Identifier
131519
Publisher
TNO
Source title
18th International Symposium on Ballistics, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 15-19 November 1999
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