Investigation of Ballistic Performance of Ceramic Armors With Tests and Analysis Which Contains Multilayer Ceramic Tiles

Abstract

Ceramic armors have been developed to provide high ballistic protection with low density. Ceramic armors consist of three basic components, these are: the ceramic tile, the ductile backing plate, and the adhesive to bond the two together. Ceramic tile has high hardness and high compressive strength and is located in the front of the armor. As the armor piercing bullet tries to penetrate the ceramic tile, the nose of the bullet erodes and becomes blunt due to the high mechanical properties of the ceramic. The blunt and slowed down somewhat bullet core is stopped by the ductile backing plate. During the impact load, the ceramic tile is experienced different type loads. Due to local bending, the strike face of the ceramic tile experiences compressive stress, while the rear face experiences tensile stress. Ceramic tile needs high hardness and compressive strength on the strike face to increase erosion on the bullet. At the same time, it needs high toughness on the rear side to prevent the ceramic tile from breaking easily. However, these two properties are in conflict with each other and are not usually found at a high level in a material at the same time. In this study, ceramic structures were created by bonding two different ceramics, which one is harder at the strike face and tougher at the rear face, and whether the mentioned requirements would be met or not was investigated by ballistic tests. However, before this examination, a two-layer ceramic structure made of the same material and a monolithic ceramic were compared with ballistic tests in order to examine the effect of the layered ceramic structure. There are conflicting studies in the literature about the effect of layered ceramic structure. In this part of the study, a contribution has been made to the literature about the effect of the layered ceramic structure. In this study, ballistic tests were performed with the Depth of Penetration Method using 7.62 × 51 Armor Piercing bullets. The tested configurations were evaluated using the Ballistic Efficiency formula. In the last part of the study, Finite Element Analysis of ballistic tests were conducted, and the behavior of ceramic structures were examined.

As a result of the study, it was observed that monolithic ceramics provide higher ballistic protection than layered ceramic structures made of the same material. When the layered ceramic structure made of the same material is compared with the layered ceramic structure with harder ceramic placed on the strike face, it has been observed by ballistic tests that harder ceramic increases the ballistic performance. In the Finite Element Analysis, similar behaviors and similar results were observed with ballistic test for both investigations.