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Applications of silicon carbide ceramics in bulletproof fields

Ordinary ceramics are brittle. Depending on modern science and technology, they become the advanced ceramics which have good hardness and high-strength. The advanced ceramics should be the new material in bulletproof field with special physical performance requirements. Thus, the ceramics have become a very popular bulletproof material.

01 Bulletproof principle of ceramic materials
The bulletproof is used for consuming projectile energy and slowing down projectile speed in order to minimize the harms on the bulletproof users. Most traditional engineering materials, such as metal and so on, absorb energy through plastic deformation of structure, while ceramic materials absorb energy by micro crushing process.

There are three stages in the energy absorption process of bulletprrof ceramics roughly:
1) Initial impact stage
When the projectile hits ceramic surface of bulletproof, the warhead will become blunt. During the process of crushing the ceramic surface, the energy will be absorbed. It will cause a small and hard fragment area.
2) Erosion stage
The blunt projectile continues to erode the fragment area, forming a continuous ceramic fragment layer.
3) Deformation, crack and fracture stages
Finally, tensile stress is generated in the ceramic to break the ceramic. Then, the back plate will be deformed. The remaining energy will be absorbed by deformation of the back plate material. In the process of projectile impacting ceramic, both projectile and ceramic are damaged.

 

Silicon carbide ceramic tiles

The covalent bond of silicon carbide is very strong, and it still has high strength bond at high temperature. This structural feature endows silicon carbide ceramics with excellent strength, high hardness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, high thermal conductivity, good thermal shock resistance and other properties; At the same time, silicon carbide ceramic is one of the most promising high-performance armor protection materials with moderate price and high cost performance.

Silicon carbide ceramic has broad development space in the field of armor protection, and its application in the fields of individual equipment and special vehicles tends to be diversified. As a protective armor material, considering the cost and special application conditions, small ceramic panels and composite backplates are usually bonded to form ceramic composite target plates to overcome the failure of ceramics due to tensile stress, and to ensure that only a single piece is broken without damaging the whole armor when the projectile penetrates.

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