Rr. Franzen et al., THE INFLUENCE OF EXPERIMENTAL-DESIGN ON DEPTH-OF-PENETRATION (DOP) TEST-RESULTS AND DERIVED BALLISTIC EFFICIENCIES, International journal of impact engineering, 19(8), 1997, pp. 727-737
Experimental data for ceramic armor materials from two test methods, s
mall-scale reverse ballistic tests and depth-of-penetration (DOP) test
s, are reviewed and compared. Results from reverse ballistic tests can
be used to estimate the length of rod erosion in the ceramic tiles of
DOP tests. The outcome of a given DOP test can then be predicted by u
sing recently published data bases on RHA penetration to determine the
residual penetration into the steel back-up of the DOP test. Results
of this methodology, compared to experimental DOP-test results, agree
reasonably well for aluminum nitride and silicon carbide, even though
scale sizes, impact velocities and experimental procedures varied cons
iderably between investigators. The methodology was then applied to si
ngle-valued performance criteria for ceramic armor materials, for exam
ple, mass efficiency. This analysis demonstrates that in certain cases
, test parameters, like the ratio of penetrator length to ceramic tile
thickness, affect test results considerably more than differences bet
ween ceramic types. Thus, DOP tests must be properly designed and inte
rpreted in order to assess correctly the ballistic performance of cera
mics. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.