Why Ceramic Armor? Hard but brittle!

Ceramics at first glance don't seem be a particularly good material for armor, especially not for tank armor, considering how brittle they can be. Of course, there is difference between our "household" ceramics and technical ceramics, still various properties like brittleness remain. In this video Professor Paul Hazell (UNSW Canberra) and I talk about how ceramic armor can be used against shaped charges, but also kinetic rounds. We also look at strength and weaknesses in comparison to steel.

Cover Photo by Cpl Tyler L. Main, Marines from 4th Tank Division, Twentynine Palms, Calif., roll down a dirt road on their M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank during a day of training at Exercise Africa Lion 2012. License Public Domain: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dinfos_... Modification by MHV: horizontal flip.


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»» SOURCES ««

Hazell, Paul J.: Armour: Materials, Theory, and Design. 2nd Edition, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group: Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 2022. https://routledge.pub/Armour

Crouch, Ian G.: The Science of Armour Materials. Woodhead Publishing: Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2017.

Bird, Lorrin Rexford; Livingston, Robert D.: World War II Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery. Second Edition, Overmatch Press: Albany, New York, USA, 2001.


#CeramicArmor,#Armor101,#tanks

00:00 Intro
00:33 Disruptor & Absorber
01:30 Face Hardened Armor
02:09 Ceramics Basics
03:57 Layering of Ceramic Armor
04:15 HEAT Penetration Visualized Panzerfaust
05:03 Ceramic Armor how it would be used
07:10 How Multi-Layer Armor defeats a shaped charge
08:30 Cone Formation
09:01 Use of Ceramics versus Kinetic Rounds?
10:07 First wide-scale Military Use
10:47 Strength & Weaknesses compared to Metal
11:37 Summary