Military helicopters, combat vehicles and limousines could be made safer with an improved armor developed by researchers at ORNL. Tests at the lab show that tiles made of ORNL's boron carbide ceramic and facings made of polymer matrix composites provide superior armor-piercing bullet-stopping ability than commercially available ceramic armor. And, compared to steel, the ceramic material is two to three times harder, less than half the weight yet features greater stopping power. In tests performed at a ballistics range, the ceramic tiles sandwiched by four layers of a polymer matrix composite stopped 30-caliber armor-piercing bullets traveling up to 2,800 feet per second. "The hardness of the ceramic fractures the bullet, making it easier to stop small fragments," said Steve Nunn of the lab's Metals and Ceramics Division. If the project receives further funding, Nunn and colleagues plan to conduct tests to shed more light on why ORNL's tile provided for up to 24 percent better performance than commercially available ceramic tiles - and why ORNL's composite facing improved the ballistic performance of a commercial armor tile by 40 percent.
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