Impact studies of five ceramic materials and Pyrex

We measured the ballistic performance of five ceramic materials (alumina, s ilicon carbide, boron carbide, aluminum nitride, and titanium diboride) and Pyrex, when they are backed by thick steel plates. The projectile for all tests was a right-circular cylinder of tungsten sinter-alloy W2 with length 25.4 mm and diameter 6.35 mm, fired at velocities from 1.35 to 2.65 km/s. For this threat we determined the minimum areal density of each material th at is needed to keep the projectile from penetrating the backup steel. For all of the facing materials studied here, this performance measure increase s approximately linearly with projectile velocity. However, the rate of inc rease is significantly lower for aluminum nitride than for the other materi als studied. Indeed, aluminum nitride is a poor performer at the lowest vel ocity tested, but is clearly the best at the highest velocity. Our computer simulations show the significant influence of the backing material on cera mic performance, manifested by a transition region extending two projectile diameters upstream from the material interface. Experiments with multiple material layers show that this influence also manifests itself through a si gnificant dependence of ballistic performance on the ordering of the materi al layers. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.