Transparent ceramic armor

Technical Report · Mon May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1978

OSTI ID:6626799

Ballard, Jr, C P

A transparent ceramic armor system has been developed and ballistically tested at Sandia Laboratories. It consists of a thin sapphire crystal front plate supported by a 3.5-cm Pyrex glass laminate and 2.5- to 1.26-cm polycarbonate laminate. Typically, sapphire plates with a thickness of 0.06 to 0.08 cm may be used with this design to provide protection against caliber .30 armor-piercing projectiles. The armor composite has a total thickness of approximately 6 cm and an areal density of 101 to 119 kg/m/sup 2/. The principal advantage of this system is that it uses relatively low-cost, edge-defined, film-fed, grown (EFG) sapphire single crystals on the projectile impact surface. Thin plates of this material are commercially available. The current material and fabrication cost of this armor system is estimated to be $14,000/m/sup 2/, which is approximately one fourth the cost of other transparent armor systems of similar quality.

• Research Organization: Sandia Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: EY-76-C-04-0789
• OSTI ID: 6626799
• Report Number(s): SAND-77-1736
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ARMOR
FABRICATION
GLASS
IMPACT STRENGTH
LAYERS
PLATES
POLYCARBONATES
SAPPHIRE
WINDOWS
ALUMINIUM COMPOUNDS
ALUMINIUM OXIDES
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBONATES
CHALCOGENIDES
CORUNDUM
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
MINERALS
OPENINGS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
360301* - Composite Materials- Preparation & Fabrication- (-1987)