[NYFriend]

If you smack a diamond ring wrong, it will shatter. Not what you want from armor. You'd rather it be soft but not brittle. They won't make good kinetic energy projectiles, because they'd fragment on impact (if they could survive being accelerated) without penetrating. They would also wear the barrel down.

[harpseal]

Now I would not completely dismiss diamods as part of armor. Perhaps as part of a laminate with other materials.

[harpseal]

Now I would not completely dismiss diamods as part of armor. Perhaps as part of a laminate with other materials.

[Bernard Marx]

If you smack a diamond ring wrong, it will shatter.

There are planes of weakness in diamond just as there are in sheets of mica. The materials an be separated easily in those directions. There's a huge difference between "hardness" and "toughness." Jade, an amphibole, is much tougher than diamond although it's a lot softer. It has an interlocking fibrous structure that makes it very tough -- a fact primitive peoples figured out quickly which made it popular for use in early tools.

[null and void]

If you smack a diamond ring wrong, it will shatter. Not what you want from armor. You'd rather it be soft but not brittle. They won't make good kinetic energy projectiles, because they'd fragment on impact (if they could survive being accelerated) without penetrating. They would also wear the barrel down.

Ah, but a matrix of diamond in steel will grind a penetrator to powder before it gets all the way through. Diamond provides the hardness, the steel provides the toughness, and keeps the grit in contact with the projectile...

[SauronOfMordor]

If you smack a diamond ring wrong, it will shatter. Not what you want from armor.

Glass also shatters. But if you make it into a thin thread, it is very flexible. Take glass fibers in a resin matrix, and you have fiberglass, which is strong, tough, and light.

Look at post 146 about layering diamond onto a steel substrate. If it can be done cheaply, then we could see "sandwich" armor composed of alternating layers of steel and diamond.