Posted on 10/18/2005 5:14:00 PM PDT by strategofr
Have you let MIT know of your musings?
Very interesting. I must say though, does this require a a study? It doesn't take a scientist to figure out why a barrier will stop a dump truck traveling at 60MPH while that same barrier wont prevent a Dodge Viper traveling at 120MPH from passing through.
Instead of trying to modify the armor, why not put another layer of a separate material outside of the armor, which will slow the incoming projectile enough that the "hypervelocity impact induced phase change" does not occur?
um, they were wondering HOW is breaks under greater impact right? not WHY.
just about everything will break eventually as you increase the pressure/impact.
they should have used gooder english for writing this here article. its bad enough to change the meaning.
Jim McCauley... the inventor of transparent aluminum. Good man.
I disagree. While it may be true that "it doesn't take a scientist to figure that a barrier...", it is a much more difficult question to figure out "why a barrier..."
Maybe some of this stuff:
Air Force testing new transparent armor
Point taken. ;^)
I suggest hyper-dimensional phase-shifting armor.
Armors generally work by either breaking and catching the projectile (like boron carbide body armor) or by eroding the projectile away (like M1 tank armor). Armor of the latter variety doesn't generally slow the projectile down appreciably until it is nearly fully eroded, and so an eroding cover on B4C wouldn't help. On the other hand, a cover that could slow down the projectile would be a suitable replacement for B4C, and so just dispense with it altogether.
In fact, there are specialized cases where what you suggest may make sense and is done, but in general, adding a cover to the base armor, without diminishing the base armor is a recipe for overweight, overthick protection.
> I suggest hyper-dimensional phase-shifting armor.
Beam me up, Scotty.
> Perhaps if they dig deeper, they will discover the Rumsfeld/Cheny effect.
Is that the one where, if you are a real hard-ass, you don't need no steenken armor. Yeah, I think the chemical composition is M4C (Moron-Clymer).
Because that's not the question. The question is why the armor was performing less well than predicted for a given velocity. The study figured out what the problem was, and because we now know the problem, they'll be able to design more effective armors in the future.
>>"The question now is, how should we try to change the boron carbide?"
> Positive thinking: A 12 Step Program. Really this is the kind of question you should ask over at DU?
Material scientists talk like this all the time. It's quite unnerving to us Mech.E's
Easily defeated by a transphasic projectile.
Then it is no longer lightweight. It also becomes bulky.....
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